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SCENES AND THOUGHTS 



EUROPE. 



B 5f AN AMERICAN. 



NEW YORK: 

GEORGE P. PUTNAM. 

155 BROADWAY. 
1861. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1846, by 

GEORGE H. CALVERT, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. 



T. B. Smith, Stereotyper, 
216 William Street 



PREFACE. 



Certain classes of books are such favorites, that nearly 
the whole responsibility of publishing them should be borne 
by the public. The eagerness with which they are read 
is a premium on their production. The traveller in foreign 
lands finds the privacy of his letters and journal encroached 
upon while writing them, by the thought that they may be 
turned into " copy " for the printer. To so many others 
has this happened, that the possibility of its happening to 
himself cannot be kept out of his mind, spotting, it may 
be, the candor of his statements. Afterwards, when he 
lias been at home long enough for the incidents of his jour- 
ney to grow by distance of time into reminiscences, what 
he wrote on the spot comes upon him with unexpected 
freshness and distinctness. Himself gets information and 
entertainment from the perusal of his notes, letters and 
diary. In this state of semi- self-complacency, the public 
urgently invites him to its broad tables — invites him 
through the kindness wherewith it has loaded so many of 
his book-blazoned fellow-travellers. He begins to criticise 
his manuscript ; to shape it by excisions, by additions ; to 
calculate quantity ; to confer with a popular publisher, — 
who is of course in close league with the pubUc, — until at 
last, he finds that his manuscript has been made away with 
and in its stead he has proof sheets. His private doings 



PREFACE. 



and seeings, and thinkings, and feelings, are about to cease 
to be private and to become public, and himself is to be 
thrust in every page personally before the world by the 
printers, notvi^ithstanding his constant endeavor to merge 
his individuality, and, Hke modest editors, to multiply and 
disperse himself by means of the indefinite we. He is in 
the case to claim the favor that is shown at a feast to a 
guest especially summoned for the entertainment of the 
company. The host is the public, whose part it is to bear 
with his waywardness, to be indulgent towards his short- 
comings, to overlook his deficiencies. The author of the 
following little volume scarcely need add, that this claim 
of the author-guest is strong in proportion as he possesses 
the one virtue, the rare virtue, of brevity. 

March, 1846. 



SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE 



Ambleside, Westmoreland County, England, 
July 29th, 1840, Wednesday Evening. 

My Dear : 

Three weeks since, I was in America : I am now writing to 
you from an English village, distant but a mile from the dwelling 
of Wordsworth. Between noon and evening we have come to-day 
ninety miles; first by railroad from Liverpool to Lancaster, 
where we took outside seats on a coach to Kendall, and thence 
by postchaise fourteen miles to Ambleside. An American just 
landed in England wants more than his two eyes to look at the 
beautiful, green " old country." For several miles the road lay 
along the bank of Lake Windermere, sleeping in the evening 
shadows at the feet of its mountains, whose peaks were shrouded 
in mist, except that of Nabscar, on whose southern side near its 
base stands the Poet's house. 

So soon as we were established in the clean little inn, I walked 
out, about eight o'clock, on the road that passes Wordsworth's 
door. Meeting a countryman, when I had been afoot ten or fifteen 
minutes, I asked him, — " How far is it to Mr. Wordsworth's ?" 
" Only a quarter of a mile." The wood-skirted road wound 
among gentle hills, that on one side ran quickly up into mountains, 
so that the house was not in view ; and having resolved not to 
seek him till to-morrow, I turned back with the tall laborer, who 
told me he was working at Wordsworth's. We passed a lady 
and gentleman on foot, who both gave a friendly salutation to my 
companion. " That," said he, " is Mr. Wordsworth's daughter." 

2 



SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



Thursday Evening. 

This morning, at ten, Nabscar still wore his nightcap of mist, 
but as the wind then hauled, in sailor's phrase, to the north from 
the southwest, which is the rainy quarter here^ he was robed 
before noon in sunshine, to welcome on his breast a far-travelled 
homager. 

I spent an hour to-day with Wordsworth. His look, talk, and 
bearing, are just what a lover of his works would wish to find 
them. His manner is simple, earnest, manly. The noble head, 
large Roman nose, deep voice, and tall spare figure, make up an 
exterior that well befits him. He talked freely on topics that natu- 
rally came up on the occasion. He proposed that we should 
walk out into his grounds. What a site for a poet's abode ! One 
more beautiful the earth could scarcely offer. A few acres give 
shifting views of the Paradise about him, embracing the two lakes 
of Windermere and Grasmere. Would that you could have 
heard him sum up in hearty English the characteristics of the 
bounteous scene ! We passed a small field of newly-cut hay, 
which laborers were turning ; — " I have been at work there this 
morning," said Wordsworth, " and heated myself more than was 
prudent." In the garden a blackbird ran across our path : " I 
like birds better than fruit," said he ; " they eat up my fruit, but 
repay me with their songs." By those who, like you, appreciate 
Wordsworth, these trifles will be prized as significant of his 
habits. I would not record them, did I believe that himself, — 
with knowledge of the feelings which to us make them valuable, — 
would regard the record as a violation of the sacred privacy of 
his home. A literary caterer might have seized upon much thai 
would better have served a gossiping hireling's purpose. 

Saturday, August 1st, 1840. 

Yesterday evening we spent three hours at Rydal Mount, the 
name not of the mountain near whose base is Wordsworth's 



WORDSWORTH. 



dwelling, but of the dwelling itself. We went, by invitation, 
early. Wordsworth, soon after we arrived, familiarly took me 
through the back gate of his enclosure, to point out the path by 
which I might ascend to the top of Nabscar, — a feat I purposed 
attempting the next day. On our return, he proposed a visit to 
Rydal Fall, a few hundred yards from his door in Rydal Park. 
On learning that five weeks since we had stood before Niagara, 
an exclamation burst from his lips, as if the sublime spectacle 
were suddenly brought near to him. " But, come," said he, after 
a moment, " I am not afraid to show you Rydal Fall, though you 
have so lately seen Niagara." As for part of the way he walked 
before us in his thick shoes, his large head somewhat inclined 
forward, occasionally calling our looks to tree or shrub, I had 
him, as he doubtless is in his solitary rambles for hours daily, in 
habitual meditation, greeting as he passes many a flower and 
sounding bough, and pausing at times from self-communion, to 
bare his mind to the glories of sky and earth which ennoble his 
chosen abode. 

At the end of our walk a short descent brought us to the door 
of a small, stone, wood-embowered structure, the vestibule, as it 
were, to the temple. Entering, the waterfall was before us, 
beheld through a large regular oblong opening or window which 
made a frame to the natural picture. The fall was not of more 
than twenty-five feet, and the stream only a large brook, but from 
the happiest conjunction of water, rock and foliage ; of color, 
form, sound and silvan still life ; resulted a scene, decked by 
nature so choicely, and with such delicate harmony, that you felt 
yourself in one of Beauty's most perfect abiding-places. The 
deep voice of Wordsworth mingled at intervals with the sound of 
the fall. We left the spot to return to his house. The evening 
was calm and sunny ; we were in an English Park in the bosom 
of mountains ; we had come from a spot sanctified by Beauty, 
and Wordsworth walked beside us. 



SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



The walls of the drawing-room and library, connected by a 
door, in which, with the aifable kindness of a refined gentlewo- 
man, Mrs. Wordsworth received ourselves and a few other guests, 
were covered with books and pictures. Wordsworth showed me 
many editions of the British Poets. He put into my hands a copy 
of the first edition of Paradise Lost, given him by Charles Lamb. 
He spoke copiously, and in terms of admiration, of Alston, whom 
he had known well. In connection with Alston, he mentioned 
his " friend Coleridge." The opportunity thus offered of leading 
him to speak of his great compeer, was marred by one of the 
company giving another turn to the conversation. Wordsworth, 
throughout the evening, was in a fine mood. His talk was clear 
and animated ; at times humorous or narrative. He narrated 
several lively incidents with excellent effect. We sat in the 
long English twilight till past nine o'clock. 

Sunday Morning, August 2d, 1840. 

Yesterday was pleasantly filled in making an excursion to 
Colistone Lake, in rowing on Windermere, and in strolling in the 
evening through the meadows around Ambleside. At every 
pause in our walk, the aspect of the landscape varied, under the 
control of the chief feature of the scenery, the encircling moun- 
tains with their vast company of shadows, which, as unconsciously 
changing your position you shift the point of view, open or close 
gorges and valleys, and hide or reveal their own tops, producing 
the effect of a moving panorama. 

But a week since, we were on the ocean, — a month since, in 
the new world, — now, on the beaten sod of the old, young Ameri- 
cans enjoying old England. Every object within sight, raised by 
the hand of man, looks touched with antiquity ; the grey stone wall 
with its coping of moss, the cottage ivy-screened, the Saxon 
church tower. Even what is new, hasn't anew look. The modern 
mansion is mellowed by architecture and tint into keeping with its 



RYDAL CHURCH. 



older neighbors. To be old here, is to be respectable, and time- 
honored is the epithet most coveted. You see no sign of the 
doings of yesterday or yesteryear : the new is careful of obtruding 
itself, and conies into the world under matronage of the old. But 
the footprint of age is not traced in rust and decay. We are in 
free and thriving England, where Time's accumulations are 
shaped by a busy, confident, sagacious hand, man co-working 
with Nature at the " ceaseless loom of Time," so that little be 
wasted and little misspent. The English have a strong sympathy 
with rural nature. The capabilities of the landscape are de- 
veloped and assisted with a loving and judicious eye, and the 
beautiful effects are visible not merely in the lordly domain or 
secluded pleasure-ground, where a single mind brings about a 
pre-determined end, but in the general aspect of the land. The 
thatched cottage, the broad castle, the simple lawn, the luxurious 
park, the scattered hamlet, the compact borough, all the features 
which make up the physiognomy of woody, mossy, rain-washed, 
England, harmonize with nature and with one another. 

Sunday Afternoon, 2 o'clock. 

We walked this morning to Rydal Church, which is within 
almost a stone's throw of Wordsworth's dwelling. Through a 
cloudless sky and the Sabbath stillness, the green landscape 
looked like a corner of Eden. In the small simple church there 
were not more than sixty persons, the congregation, as Words- 
worth told us afterwards, consisting of fourteen families. When 
the service was over, Wordsworth, taking us one under each arm, 
led us up to his house. After a short visit we took our final leave. 

In these three days, I have spent several hours at different 
times with Wordsworth. I have listened to his free and cordial 
talk, walked with him, beheld the beautiful landscape of West- 
moreland with the aidance of his familiar eye, and have been the 
object of his hospitality, more grateful to me than would be that 



SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



of his sovereign. The purpose of our visit to Ambleside being 
accomplished, we leave this in half an hour. 

Oxford, Wednesday Morning, August 5th, 1840. 

A glance at the map of England will show you what a flight 
we 've made since Sunday. For most of the way 't was literally 
a flight, being chiefly by steam. Yet have we had time to tarry 
on the road, and give ourselves up tranquilly without hurry to 
deep and gentle impressions. 

Leaving Ambleside on Sunday afternoon, our road ran for ten 
miles along the eastern shore of Lake Windermere, which lay 
shining at our side, or sparkling through the foliage that shades 
the neat dwellings on its border. From the mountains of the 
lake region we passed suddenly into the flats of Lancashire, and 
at dark reached Lancaster, too late to get a good view of, what 
we had however seen as we went up from Liverpool, the castle, 
founded by 

" Old John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster." 

Between nine and three o'clock on Monday, a railroad bore us 
from Lancaster, on the north-west coast, to Coventry (which Fal- 
stafl* marched through) in Warwickshire, the very heart of Eng- 
land. We passed through, but did not stop at Birmingham. The 
sight and thought of these great overworked underfed workshops 
are oppressive. An invalid has not the nerves to confront the 
gaunt monster. Poverty, that dragging along its ghastly offspring, 
Squalor and Hunger, stalks so strangely through this abundant 
land. 

There is nothing like a " locomotive " for giving one a first 
vivid view of a country. Those few hours left on my brain a 
clear full image of the face of England, such as can be had by 
no other means. Town, river, village, cottage, castle, set all in 
their native verdure, are so approximated by rapidity of move- 



WARWICK CASTLE. 



merit, as to be easily enclosed by the memory in one frame. The 
ten miles between Coventry and Warwick, a stage-coach carried 
us on its top, passing through Kenilworth village, and giving us 
a glimpse of the famous ruins. 

Beautiful to behold is England on a sunny summer's day ; so 
clean, so verdant, so full of quiet life, so fresh, wearing so lightly 
the garland of age. What a tree ; — that cottage, how fragrant 
it looks through its flowers ; — the turf about that church has been 
green for ages. Here is a thatched hamlet, its open doors lighted 
with rosy faces at the sound of our wheels ; — this avenue of oaks 
sets the imagination to building a mansion at the end of it. What 
town is that clustered around yon huge square tower ? and the 
ear welcomes a familiar name, endeared by genius to the Ame- 
rican heart. Such is a half hour of one's progress through time- 
enriched England, the mother of Shakspeare and Cromwell, of 
Milton and Newton. 

Yesterday morning we walked to Warwick Castle, which lies 
just without the town. There stands the magnificent feudal 
giant, shorn of its terrors ; its high embattled turrets dis- 
armed by Time's transmuting inventions ; its grim frowns 
converted to graceful lineaments ; its hoarse challenges to gentle 
greetings ; there it stands, grand and venerable, on the soft green 
bank of Avon, guarded by man's protecting arm against the level- 
ling blasts of antiquity, not less a token of present grandeur than 
a monument of former glories. As slowly as the impatient 
attendant would let us, we loitered through the broad lofty halls 
and comfortable apartments, from whose walls flash the bright 
heads of Vandyke. Through the deep windows you look down 
into the Avon, which flows by the castle and through the noble 
park. We lingered on the green lawn, enclosed within the castle 
walls, and in the smooth grounds without them, and we hung about 
the towers of the dark old pile until noon, when we walked back 
to the inn, having enjoyed without drawback, and with more than 



8 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

fulfilment of cherished expectations, one of the grandest specta- 
cles old Europe has to offer. 

At one we were approaching Stratford on Avon, distant eight 
miles from Warwick. Fifteen years since I was on the same 
ground. But Shakspeare was to me then but a man, to whom 
greatness had been decreed by the world's judgment. I was not 
of an age to have verified for myself his titles : I had not real- 
ized by contemplation the immensity of his power : my soul had 
not been fortified by direct sympathy with his mighty nature. 
But now I felt that I was near the most sacred spot in Europe, 
and I was disappointed at the absence of emotion in my mind. 
Here Shakspeare was bom, and here he lies buried. We stood 
above his bones : on the marble slab at our feet, we read the 
lines touching their rest, invoking a curse on him who should 
disturb them. We sat down on a bench within a few feet of the 
sacred dust. We walked out by a near door past tomb-stones 
to the edge of the Avon. The day was serene and bright. We 
returned, and gazed again on the simple slab. 'Twas not till 
we had quitted the church, and were about to pass out of the 
yard, that a full consciousness of the holiness of the place arose 
in me. For an instant I seemed to feel the presence of Shak- 
speare. We walked slowly back towards the inn. In this path 
he has walked ; at that sunny corner he has lounged ; — but 
'twas like clutching at corporeal substance in a dream, to try to 
call up a familiar image of Shakspeare. Objects around looked 
unsubstantial ; what the senses beheld wore the aspect of a vision ; 
the only reality was the thought of Shakspeare, which wrapped 
the mind in a vague magical sensation. 

Between three and four o'clock we were on the way to Oxford, 
smoothly rolling over an undulating road, under a cloudless sky, 
through the teeming, tree-studded fields. We passed through 
Woodstock, and for several miles skirted the Park of Blenheim. 
'Twas dark ere we entered Oxford. The coach whirled us past 



OXFORD 



square upon square of majestic piles and imposing shapes, and 
we alighted at the inn, suddenly and strongly impressed with the 
architectural magnificence of Oxford. We are going out to get 
a view by sunlight ere we set off for London, which we are to 
reach before night. 

London, August 10th, 1840. 

From the top of the coach, which carried us eight miles to the 
Great Western Railroad, I looked back upon the majestic crown 
of towers and spires, wherewith, — as if to honor by a unique prodi- 
gality of its gifts, the high, long enduring seat of learning, — the 
genius of architecture has encircled the brow of Oxford. At a 
speed of thirty to forty-five miles an hour, we shot down to 
Windsor, where we again quitted the railroad for a post-chaise, 
wishing to enter London more tranquilly than by steam. 

By the road from Windsor it is hard to say when you do enter 
liondon, being encased by houses miles before you reach Picca- 
dilly. Some cities are begirt with walls, some with public walks, 
some merely with water ; but London, it may be said without 
solecism, is surrounded by houses. At last the " West End " 
opens grandly to view through Hyde Park. What a look of 
vastness, of wealth, of solid grandeur ! We are passing the 
house of Wellington, and there to the right, across the Green 
Park and St. James's, are the towers of Westminster Abbey. We 
are in the largest and wealthiest city of the world, the capital of 
the most vast and powerful empire the earth has ever known. 
' We can now give but a few days to London, barely enough to 
get a notion of its material dimensions and outward aspects. 
Size, activity, power, opulence, fill with confused images the 
wearied brain when the stranger's laborious day is over. The 
streets of London seem interminable ; its private palaces are 
countless ; its population consists of many multitudes. Through 
its avenues flow in counter-currents, from morn till midnight, 

9* 



10 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



the streams which send and receive from the ends of the earth, 
the life-blood of a commerce, which all climes and continents 
nourish. From within its precincts issue words, that, sped to the 
four quarters of the globe, are laws to more than one hundred 
millions of men. Thither are the ears of states directed ; and 
when in the Senate, that for ages has had its seat in this still 
growing capital, the prime minister of England speaks, all the 
nations hearken. Of the wealth, strength, bulk, grandeur of the 
realm, London is the centre and palpable evidence. See the 
docks in the morning, and drive round the Parks in the afternoon, 
and you behold the might and magnificence of Britain. 

From this endless throng I was withdrawn yesterday to a scene, 
a sketch of which will, I know, have for you especial interest. 
I drove to Highgate Hill, and alighted at the house of Mr. Gil- 
man. From the servant who opened the door I learnt that he 
had been dead several months. Mrs. Oilman was at home. I 
was shown into a neat back drawing-room, where sat an elderly 
lady in deep mourning. I apologized for having come to her 
house : it was my only means of getting tidings of one I had 
known well many years before in Gottingen, and who, I was 
aware, had been a friend and pupil of Mr. Coleridge during his 
stay under her roof. She made a sign to the servant to withdraw, 
and then gave way to her emotion. " All gone, all gone !" were 
the only words she could at first utter. My friend had been dead 
many years, then Coleridge, and lastly her husband. I was much 

moved. Mr. had been a son to her: to have been intimate 

with him was a favorable introduction to herself. She showed 
me several of Mr. Gilman's books, filled with notes in Coleridge's 
handwriting, from which are taken many passages of the " Re- 
mains." In another room was his bust ; and in another a fine 
picture by Alston, given by him to his great friend. She put 
into my hands a sonnet in manuscript, written and sent to her by 



COLERIDGE. 11 



AlstoHj on the death of Coleridge,— the most beautiful thing of 
the kind I ever read. 

In the third story is the chamber opened by the most cordial 
and honorable friendship to the illustrious sufferer, and by him 
occupied for many years. There was the be4 whereon he died. 
From the window I looked out over a valley upon Caen Wood. 
Here, his lustrous eyes fixed in devout meditation, Coleridge was 
wont to behold the sunset. Mrs. Gilman tired not of talking of 
him, nor I of listening. I thought, how happy, with all his cha- 
grins and disappointments, he had been in finding such friends. 
You recollect with what affection and hearty thankfulness he 
speaks of them. They could sympathize with the philosopher and 
the poet, as well as with the man, Mrs, Gilman's talk told of 
converse with one of England's richest minds. To me it was a 
bright hour, and with feelings of more than esteem for its lonely 
inmate, I quitted the roof where, in his afflicted old age, the author 
of Christabel had found a loving shelter. In a few moments I 
was again in the whirl of the vast metropolis. I shall bear away 
from it no more vivid or grateful recollection than that of yester- 
day's visit. Few men have had more genius than Coleridge, 
more learning, or more uprightness, and in the writings of none 
is there more soul. His poetry will live with his language. As 
a prose writer, he is a conscientious seeker of truth, a luminous 
expounder of the mysteries of life ; and the earnest student of 
his pages, without accepting in full either his Theology, or his 
Philosophy, or his Politics, finds himself warmed, instructed and 
exalted, 

J, Leamington, September, 1840. 

The day after the date of my last, we left London for Leam- 
ington in Warwickshire, where we have been for a month. 
There are times when one can neither write nor even read, I 
begin to fear that I shall not have many moods for work in Eu- 



12 SCENES AND I'HOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

rope. To say nothing of health, one's mind is constantly beset 
by superficial temptations. All kinds of trifling novelties impor- 
tune the attention. And even when settled for weeks in the same 
lodging, one is ever possessed by the feeling of instability. 

My reading at Leamington has been chiefly of newspapers. 
From them, however, something may be learnt by a stranger. 
They reflect the surface of society ; and as surfaces mostly take 
their shape and hue from depths beneath them, one may read in 
newspapers somewhat more than they are paid for printing. Even 
the London " Satirist," that rankest sewer of licentiousness, has 
a social and political significance. It could only live in the shade 
of an Aristocracy. The stomach of omnivorous scandal were 
alone insufficient to digest its gross facts and fabrications. The 
Peer is dragged through a horse-pond for the sport of the ple- 
beian. The artisan chuckles to see Princes and Nobles wallow- 
ing in dirt, in print. The high are brought so low that the low- 
est can laugh at them : the proud, who live on contempt, are 
pulled down to where themselves can be scorned by the basest. 
The wit consists chiefly in the contrast between the elevation of 
the game and the filthiness of the ammunition wherewith it is 
assailed ; between the brilliancy of the mark and the obscurity 
of the marksman. A register is kept of Bishops, Peeresses, Dukes, 
Ambassadors, charged with being swindlers, adulterers, buffoons, 
panders, sycophants ; and this is one way of keeping Englishmen 
in mind that all men are brothers. It is a weekly sermon, suited 
to some of the circumstances of the times and people, on the text — 
" But many that are first shall be last." 

England looks everywhere aristocratical. A dominant idea in 
English life is possession by inheritance. Property and privilege 
are nailed by law to names. A man, by force of mind, rises 
from lowliness to a Dukedom : the man dies, but the Dukedom 
lives, and lifts into eminence a dullard perhaps, or a reprobate. 
The soul has departed, and the body is unburied. Counter to the 



ENGLISH ARISTOCRACY. 13 



order of nature, the external confers instead of receiving life ; 
and whereas at first a man made the Dukedom, afterwards 'tis 
the Dukedom that makes the man. Merit rises, but leaves be- 
hind it generations of the unmeritorious not only to feed on its 
gains, but to possess places that should never be filled but by the 
deserving. In an hereditary aristocracy the noble families form 
knots on the trunk of a nation, drawing to themselves sap which, 
for the public health, should be equally distributed. Law and 
custom attach power and influence to names and lands : whoso 
own these, govern, and so rigid and cherished are primogeniture 
and entail, that much of them is possessed without an effort or 
a natural claim. The possessor's whole right is arbitrary and 
artificial. 

To ascribe the short-comings of England to the aristocratic 
principle, were as shallow as to claim for it her many glories. 
In her development it has played its part according to her consti- 
tutional temperament ; but her development has been richer and 
healthier than that of her neighbors, because her aristocracy has 
had its roots in the people, or rather because (a false aristocracy 
having been hitherto in Europe unavoidable) her people have been 
manly and democratic enough not to suffer one distinct in blood 
to rear itself among them. Compare English with any other aris- 
tocracy, and this in it is notable and unique ; it does not form a 
caste. It is not, like the German, or Russian, or Italian, a distinct 
breed from that of the rest of the nation ; nay, its blood is ever 
renewed from the veins of the people. This is the spring of its 
life ; this has kept it in vigor ; this strengthens it against degene- 
racy. It sucks at the breast of the mighty multitude. Hence at 
bottom it is, that the English Peer is in any part of the world a 
higher personage than the German Count or Italian Prince. He 
cannot show pedigrees with them, and this, a cause of mortification 
to his pride, is the very source of his superiority. 

From this cause, English Aristocracy is less far removed than 



14 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

any other in Europe from a genuine Aristocracy, or government 
of the Best, of which, however, it is still but a mockery. It is 
not true that all the talent in the realm gravitates towards the 
House of Lords, but some of it does ; and as such talent is, of 
course, in alliance with worldly ambition, the novi homines in 
Parliament are apt not to be so eminent for principle as for intellect. 
Until men shall be much purer than they have yet been, no na- 
tion will, under any form of polity, throw up its best men into 
high places. The working of the representative system with us 
has revealed the fact, that with free choice a community chooses 
in the long run men who accurately represent itself. Should 
therefore Utopia lie embosomed in our future, instead of the pre- 
sent very mixed assemblage, our remote posterity may look for a 
Congress that will present a shining level of various excellence. 
Only, that should so blessed an era be in store. Congresses and 
all other cunning contrivances called governments will be super- 
fluous. In England, in legislation and in social life, most of the 
best places are filled by men whose ancestors earned them, and 
not themselves. These block the way to those who, like their 
ancestors, are capable in a fair field of winning eminence. By 
inheritance are enjoyed posts demanding talent, liberality, refine- 
ment — qualities not transmissible. It is subjecting the spiritual 
to the corporeal. It is setting the work of man. Earls and Bish- 
ops, over the work of God, men. The world is ever prone to put 
itself in bondage to the external : laws should aim to counteract 
the tendency. Here this bondage is methodized and legalized. 
The body politic has got to be but feebly organic. Men are 
obliged in every direction to conform rigidly to old forms ; to reach 
their end by mechanical routine. A man on entering life finds 
himself fenced in between ancient walls. Every Englishman is 
free relatively to every other living Englishman, but is a slave to 
his forefathers. He must put his neck under the yoke of pre- 
scription. The life of every child in England is too rigorously 



CARLYLE. 15 



predestined. To him may be addressed the words of Goethe, in 
Faust : — 

Es erben sich Gesets' und Rechte 

Wie eine ew'ge Krankheit fort ; 

Sie schleppen von Geschlecht sich zum Geschlechte, 

Und riicken sacht von Ort zu Ort. 

Vernunft wird Unsinn, Wohlthat Plage ; 

Weh dir dass du ein Enkel bist ! 

Vom Rechte, das mit uns geboren ist, 

Von dem ist leider ! nie die Frage.* 

This is a rich theme, which I have merely touched. It is 
pregnant too with comfort to us with our unbridled democracy. 
May it ever remain unbridled. 

Paris, November, 1840. 

On the way from Leamington to France we were again two 
days in London, where I then saw at his house one of the master 
spirits of the age, Mr. Carlyle. His countenance is fresh, his 
bearing simple, and his frequent laugh most hearty. He has a 
wealth of talk, and is shrewd in speech as in print in detecting 
the truth in spite of concealments, and letting the air out of a 
windheutel. Like the first meeting across the seas with a bounti- 
ful worldly benefactor, — except that the feeling is much finer, 
and admits of no gross admixture, — is that with a man to whom 
you have long been under intellectual obligations. It is one of 
the heartiest moments a stranger can have abroad. The spirit 
that has been so much with him, has taken flesh and voice. He 
grasps for the first time the hand of an old friend. When in 

* Laws and rights are inherited like an everlasting disease ; they drag 
themselves along from generation to generation, and quietly move from 
place to place. Reason becomes nonsense, blessings become curses ; woe to 
thee that thou art a grandchild ! Of the right that is born with us, of this, 
alas ! there is no thought. 



16 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

London before, I had a good view of the Duke of Wellington, as 
he rode up to his house, at the corner of Hyde Park, and dis- 
mounted ; so that I have seen England's three foremost living 
men, Wordsworth, Wellington, Carlyle. 

On Friday afternoon September 11th, at three o'clock, we left 
London by railroad for Southampton, which we reached at six, 
and crossing the channel by steamboat in the night, entered the 
port of Havre at ten the next morning. The town looked dirty 
at a distance, and is dirtier than it looked. The small craft we 
passed in the harbor were unclean and unwieldy. The streets 
ran filth to a degree that offended both eyes and nose. Knots of 
idle shabby men were standing at corners, gossipping, and look- 
ing at parrots and monkeys exposed for sale. The inn we got 
into, commended as one of the best, was so dirty, that we could 
not bear to face the prospect of a night in it. We hired a 
carriage and started at four with post-horses for Rouen, which 
we reached at midnight. Here we spent Sunday. Rouen is 
finely placed, on the Seine, with lofty hills about it. In the 
Diligence, in which we started early- on Monday, to overtake 
fifteen miles up the river, the steamboat to St. Germain, I heard 
a Frenchman say to a Frenchwoman, " Rouen est le pot-de-cham- 
bre de la Normandie." You know of the Cathedral at Rouen 
and of the Maid of Orleans' execution, but this is probably in all 
respects new to you. To me it was also new and satisfactory, 
being an indication that some of the dwellers in this region have 
a consciousness of the presence of stenches. We entered Paris 
in a hard rain at ten o'clock on Monday night. 

The French claim for Paris that it is the most beautiful city in 
the world. From a point on the right bank of the Seine, near the 
bridge leading from the Place de la Concorde, is the finest, and truly 
a noble panoramic view. Standing with your back to the river, 
rio-ht before you is the Place itself, with its glittering fountains 
and Egyptian Obelisk. Directly across it, the eye rests on two 



PARIS. 17 



imposing fagades, which form a grand portal to the Rue Roy ale, 
at the end whereof, less than half a mile distant, the Church of the 
Madeleine presents its majestic front of Corinthian columns. On 
the right the eye runs down the long faqade of the Rue RivoU, 
cut at right angles by the Palace of the Tuileries, peering above 
the trees of the Tuileries garden which, with its deep shade and 
wide walks, lies between you and the Palace. To the right now of 
the garden the view sweeps up the river, with its bridges and miles 
of broad quais, and ends in a distant labyrinth of building, out 
of which rises the dark head of Notre Dame de Paris. Near 
you on the opposite, that is, the left bank of the Seine, and face to 
face to the Madeleine, is the imposing Palais des EUsees Bourhons, 
now the Hall of the Deputies. To the right the gardens attached 
to the EUsees Bourbons and the grounds of the Hotel des Invalides 
fill the space near the river on the left bank, and the Cha7)ijjs 
EUsees, at one corner of which you stand, press upon its shore 
on this side, while the view directly down the stream stretches 
into the country. Back now through a full circle to your first 
position, and with the Madeleine again in front, on your left are 
the Chumps EUsees, at the other extremity of which, more than a 
mile off, just out of the Neuilly Gate, towers the gigantic Imperial 
Arch of Triumph built by Napoleon. But to get the best view of 
this magnificent Colossus, you must advance to the centre of the 
Place de la Concorde, where, from the foot of the Obelisk, with 
your back to the Tuileries, you behold it closing the chief 
Avenue of the Champs Elisees, and, by the elevation of the 
ground and its own loftiness, standing alone, the grandest monu- 
ment of the French Capital. 

A rare and most effective combination this, of objects and 
aspects. From no other city can there be embraced from a sin- 
gle point an equal extent, variety and grandeur. There are 
similar but less striking views from several other open spots. 

From the general deficiency of good architecture, large cities 



18 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



show best when, from the banks of a river or broad open squares, 
they can be beheld in long distant masses. Paris gains hereby 
especially, as, from the habits of the people, not only are the 
streets dirtier than need be, but the basements are mostly un- 
sightly and often disgusting ; and the faces generally, even of 
massive buildings, with architectural pretensions, have an un- 
washed and ragged look. 

Paris, March, 1841. 

A Frenchman, more than other men, is dependent upon things 
without himself. Nature and his own mind, with domestic inte- 
rests and recreations, are not enough to complete his daily circle. 
For his best enjoyment he must have a succession of factitious 
excitements. Out of this want Paris has grown to be the capital 
of the world for superficial amusements. Here are the appli- 
ances, — multiplied and diversified with the keenest refinement of 
sensual ingenuity, — for keeping the mind busy without labor and 
fascinated without sensibility. The senses are beset with piquant 
baits. Whoever has money in his purse, and can satisfy through 
gold his chief wants, need have little thought of the day or the 
year. He finds a life all prepared for him, and selects it, as he 
does his dinner from the voluminous carte of the Restaurant. 
To live, is for him as easy as to make music on a hand-organ : 
with but slight physical effort from himself, he is borne along from 
week to week and from season to season on an unresting current 
of diversions. Here the sensual can pass years without satiety, 
and the slothful without ennui. Paris is the Elysium of the idler, 
and for barren minds a Paradise. 

When I first arrived, I went almost nightly to some one of the 
many theatres, I soon tired of the smaller where, mostly, licen- 
tious intrigue and fabulous liberality alternate with farce to keep 
the attention awake through two or three acts of commonplace. 
At the Theatre Frangais, I saw Moliere and Rachel. It is no 



RACHEL. 19 



disparagement of Moliere to call him a truncated Shakspeare. 
The naturalness, vigor, comic sense, practical insight and scenic 
life of Shakspeare he has ; without Shakspeare's purple glow, 
his reach of imagination and ample intellectual grasp, which 
latter supreme qualities shoot light down into the former subordi- 
nate ones, and thus impart to Shakspeare's comic and lowest per- 
sonages a poetic soul, which raises and refines them, the want 
whereof in Moliere makes his low characters border on farce 
and his highest prosaic. 

Rachel is wonderful. She is on the stage an embodied radi- 
ance. Her body seems inwardly illuminated. Conceive a Greek 
statue endued with speech and mobility, for the purpose of giving 
utterance to a profound soul stirred to its depths, and you have an 
image of the magic union in her personations of fervor and grace. 
Till I heard her, I never fully valued the might of elocution. She 
goes right to the heart by dint of intonation ; just as, with his arm 
ever steady, the fencer deals or parries death by the mere motion 
of his wrist. Phrases, words, syllables, grow plastic, swell or 
contract, come pulsing with life, as they issue from her lips. Her 
head is superb ; oval, full, large, compact, powerful. She cannot 
be said to have beauty of face or figure ; yet the most beautiful 
woman were powerless to divert from her the eyes of the specta- 
tor. Her spiritual beauty is there more bewitching than can be 
the corporeal. When in the Horaces she utters the curse, it is as 
though the whole electricity of a tempest played through her 
arteries. It is not Corneille's Camille, or Racine's Hermionef 
solely that you behold, it is a dazzling incarnation of a human 
soul. 

Through Rachel I have seen the chefs-d'oeuvre of Corneille 
and Racine, reproduced by her on the French stage, whence, since 
the death of Talma, they had been banished. 

Without creation of character, there is no genuine drama. So 
vivid and individual should be the personages, that out of their 



20 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

feelings and acts the drama evolves itself, under the guidance of 
judgment and the purification of poetry. Without such individu- 
ality and productive vitality in the characters, poetry, sentiment, 
action, fail of their effect in the dramatic form. The personages 
of the French Theatre are not creations, they are transplantations. 
Corneille and Racine took in hand the tragic subjects of antiquity 
but they did not re-animate them. Agamemnon and Augusta; 
owe nothing to their Gallic parents : their souls are not swelled 
with thoughts beyond a Greek or Roman age. Measure them 
with Shakspeare's Coriolanus, or Anthony, or Brutus, and they 
are marrowless. Shakspeare has so vivified his Romans, that the 
pages of history, whence they are taken, pale by the side of them. 
The French appear not to have had depth enough to produce 
an original tragic Drama. The tragic material, — whereof senti- 
ment is as essential an element as passion. — is meagre in them, 
compared with the Germans or English ; hence the possibility 
and even necessity of a simpler plot and a measured regularity. 
Corneille or Racine could not have wrought a tragedy out of a 
tradition or a modern fable : they require a familiarized historical 
subject. The nature of French Tragedy, compared with Eng- 
lish, is happily illustrated by the Hamlet of Ducis, which I 
have seen played at the Theatre Frangais. The title of the piece 
is, " Hamlet, Tragedie en 5 acts, imitee de I'Anglais par Ducis." 
A fitter title were, " Hamlet, with the part of Hamlet lefl out, by 
particular desire of French taste." It is as much an imitation 
of Shakspeare, as straight walks and parallel lines of trees are an 
imitation of Nature. Hamlet is resolved into a tender-hearted 
affectionate son. He has not been put aside, but is king. Ophe- 
lia does anything but go mad. The mother is overwhelmed with 
remorse for the murder, which she confesses to a confidant. The 
heart of Hamlet's mystery is plucked out. The poetry is flat- 
tened into phrases. The billowy sea of Shakspeare is belittled to 



FRENCH TRAGEDY. 21 



a smooth pond, in every part whereof you can touch bottom. It 
is not deep enough to dive in. 

It is the nature of high poetry to bind the individual to 
the universal. Corneille and Racine live in a middle atmo- 
sphere between the two. They have not the rich sensibility, 
which, united on the one hand to high reason, reveals to the poet 
the primal laws of being, and on the other with powers of minute 
observation, imparts liveliness to his embodiments. They are 
neither minute nor comprehensive ; hence their personages are 
vague and prosaic. The highest quality of their tragedies is a 
refined and skilful rhetoric. Their verse is like bas-relief; the 
parts follow one another in a graceful well-joined sequence ; but 
there is no perspective, no deep vistas, breeding as you pass them 
suggestions and subtle sensations. Their personages leave nothing 
to your imagination ; they are terrible egotists ; they do most 
thoroughly "unpack their souls with words;" they give measured 
speech to feelings which at most should find but broken utter- 
ance. 

French Tragedy is not primitive. With laborious skill their 
tragic writers re-cast old materials. In Polyeucte Corneille throws 
a deeper line, but attains to no greater individuality of charac- 
terization, nor is he less declamatory than in his Roman pieces. 
Both he and Racine are more epic than dramatic. The French 
language, moulded by the mental character of a nation wanting 
in depth of sensibility, is not a medium for the highest species of 
poetry, and had Corneille and Racine been poets of the first order, 
they would either have re-fused the language, so that it would have 
flowed readily into all the forms forged by the concurrent action 
of sensibility and thought, or, failing in that, they would, like 
Rabelais, have betaken themselves to more obedient prose. Mo- 
liere had not a highly poetic mind, and he wrote verse evidently 
with uncommon ease ; and, nevertheless, 1 doubt not that even to 
him the Alexandrine was a shackle ; and although Corneille and 



22 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Racine cannot be rated among the first class of poets, I think too 
well of them not to believe, that by it their flight was greatly- 
circumscribed. French verse, which requires a delicate attention 
to metre or the mechanical constituent, affords little scope for 
rhythm, and is therefore a hindrance rather than a furtherance 
to the true poet. In other cultivated languages the form meets 
the substance half-way — is, as it were, on the watch for it ; so 
that the English, or Italian, or German poet, far from being im- 
peded by the versification of his thoughts as they rise, finds him- 
self thereby facilitated, the metre embracing the poetic matter 
with such closeness and alacrity as to encourage and accelerate 
its production and utterance. Hence in French literature the 
poets are not the highest names. Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, 
Goethe, are supreme in their respective lands ; not so Corneille 
or Racine. 

The Frenchman who, as thinker and creator, may best claim 
to rank with the poet-thinkers of other nations, did not write in 
verse. Rabelais was a master-mind. His buffoonery and smut 
are justified by Coleridge, as being a necessary vehicle in his age 
for the conveyance of truth. As it was, he is said to have owed 
his liberty and even life to the favor of Francis I. I suspect that 
he was naturally so constructed as to wear willingly such a mask. 
His great work presents a whole of the most grotesque humor, 
which may be defined, the shadow caused by the light of the spiritual 
falling on the animal through the medium of the comic. Rabelais's 
full animal nature and broad understanding presented a solid and 
variegated mass of the low and corporeal for the sun of his 
searching reason and high spirituality to shine upon, and the 
shadows resulting are broad and deep. The two natures of beast 
and man seem in him to measure their strength, for the entertain- 
ment of the Comic, which stands by and sets them on. 

Pascal is the only French writer I know in whom there is the 
greatness that results from purity and depth, the contact where- 



VOLTAIRE. 23 



with lifts one up and kindles emotions which possess the soul like 
a heavenly visitation, banishing for a time whatever there is in one 
of little or unworthy. 

Carlyle calls Voltaire the most French of Frenchmen. I will 
not do the French the injustice to call him the greatest, though 
doubtless most of his contemporaries so esteemed him. He was 
the leader of a generation whose necessary calling was to deny 
and destroy. His country panted under a monstrous accumulation 
of spiritual and civil usurpations : he wielded the sharpest axe in 
the humane work of demolition. His powers were great and his 
labors immense ; and yet there were in him such deficiencies, as 
to defeat the attainment of completeness in any one of his various 
literary undertakings. Voltaire had not soul enough to put him 
in direct communication with the heart of the Universe. What- 
ever implied emotion, came to him at second-hand, through his 
intellect. He was not a great poet, a creator ; he was a great 
demolisher. Let him have thanks for much that he did in that 
capacity. 

I record with diffidence these brief judgments, for I have made 
no wide and thorough study of French Literature. It does not 
take hold of me : it lacks soul. Of the present generation of 
writers I am still less qualified to speak, having read but par- 
tially of any one of them. They don't draw me into intimacy. 
It is a peculiarly grateful state of mind when, on laying down a 
fresh volume, you resolve to possess yourself of all that its author 
has written. You feel like one who has found a new friend. I 
have not yet met with the French writer who gives me assurance 
of this permanent enjoyment. I refer more particularly to works 
belonging to the provinces of creation and criticism, else I should 
mention Thierry, whose volume entitled Leitres sur VHistoire de la 
France seems to me a masterpiece of historical research and 
political acuteness. The authors whose names have lately most 
sounded abroad, Guizot, Cousin, Villemain, want vitality. Their 



24 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



writings, to use a phrase of Dr. Johnson, come from reservoirs, 
not springs. Thierry is of a higher order. In La Mennais is the 
will and noble aim, without the power and accomplishment. The 
romantic dramas of Hugo and others, simmering with black law- 
less passion, are opaque as well as shallow, and empty of poetry. 
They have much more sound than substance, more fury than 
force. The new French Literature is yet to come into being. 

The French beat the world in milliners, in tailors, in porcelain, 
in upholstery, in furniture ; their or molu is unrivalled, so are 
their mousselines and silks ; but not so >3 their painting, or their 
sculpture, or their music, or their poetry. In the ornamental 
they are unequalled, but not in the creative. Their sphere is the 
artificial and conventional : their sympathy with nature is not 
direct and intense. Their Ideal in Art is not the result of a warm 
embrace with nature, but of a methodical study of established 
masters. With their poets and artists the aim and motive in 
labor is too much the approval of Paris, where humanity is so 
bedizened by artifice, that the smile and melody of nature are 
scarce discernible. 

I saw Napoleon's funeral, a showy martial pageant, befitting 
the Imperial soldier. The escort was a hundred thousand armed 
men ; the followers, half a million of both sexes. For hours, 
the broad long avenue of the Champs Elisees was choked with 
the moving throng. It was a solemn moment when the funeral 
car came slowly by. There, within a few feet, lay the body of 
the man, the tramp of whose legions had been mournfully heard 
in every great capital of the continent ; whose words had been 
more than the breath of a dozen kings. His shrivelled dust passed 
through triumphal arches and columns, emblazoned with the re- 
cord of his hundred conquests. Of them, there was nothing left 
to France but the name, — of him, nothing but those cold remains. 
Not even a living member of his line was present, sadly to share 
in this tardy show of honor. The day M'as cold and so were the 



NAPOLEON. 25 



hearts of the multitude. Those bones, let out of their ocean 
prison, brought with them no hope for the nation. When they 
are buried, there will be an end of Napoleon. His name will 
hereafter be but a gorgeous emptiness : his memory is not vitalized 
by a principle. In his aims there lay no deep hope, whence his 
fellow men, battling for rights, might for ever draw courage and 
strength. While he still lived, his schemes were baffled, and 
what he founded had already passed away. His plans were all 
for himself, and hence with himself they fell, and left scarce a 
trace behind. He gave birth to no great Ideas, that, fructifying 
among men, would have built for him in their souls an everlasting 
home. He saw not into the depths of truth, and he knew not its 
unequalled might. Therefore, with all his power he was weak : 
naught of what he wished came to pass, and what he did with 
such fiery vehemence, with still more startling swiftness was 
undone. His thoughts were not in harmony with the counsels 
of God, and so they perished with himself. The Emperor will 
have his conspicuous place in History, but the man will not live 
in the minds of men. For the most potent king of the Earth, 
what is he, if he be a false man ? That one so false could so rule, 
is a token of the confusion of the times. 

One looks almost in vain for the spots that were the centres of 
the terrific doings of the Revolution. They are mostly so trans- 
formed as to have lost their identity. Time has been quick in 
wiping out the bloody stains. Whoever wishes to bring before 
his mind, on the ground itself, the place of execution, will need 
an imagination intense enough to close the avenues of his senses 
against the garish sights and sounds of the most brilliant public 
square of this gayest of capitals ; for what is now the Place de 
la Concorde, with its lively gilt fountains and rattling equipages, 
was once the Place dc la Revolution, where blood streamed daily 
under the axe of the headsman. If, then, he can succeed in call- 
ing up the Guillotine, with its pale victims and exulting throng 

3 



SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



of savage spectators, it will be easier for the timid to shudder at 
its butcheries, than for the thinker to solve the problem of their 
permission. Through the tears and woes of man, the deep laws 
of Providence march on to their mysterious fulfilment. One may 
believe, that to a people so brutified by tyranny, so despoiled of 
natural rights, was needed the swiftest sweep of authority, the 
broadest exhibition of power, the grossest verification of escape 
from bondage, in order to vindicate at last and for ever their hu- 
man claim to a will. 

The French people, according to report of those who have 
known them in both periods, are more earnest and substantial 
than they were two generations back. They think and feel more, 
and talk less. There must be hope for a nation that could erect 
itself as this did, scatter with a tempest the rooted rubbish of 
ages, overturn half the thrones of Europe, and though re-con- 
quered through the very spirit of freedom that at first had made 
itself invincible, once more at the end of a half century, rend 
the old re-imposed fetters and stand firmly on a blood-purchased 
ground of liberty, — liberty, in comparison with its civil and so- 
cial condition sixty years ago. For neither was the second Revo- 
lution any more than the first the beginning of popular rule : it 
was the end of unpopular misrule. The mass of the French 
people have still no direct agency in the government. One of 
the two legislative bodies, as you are aware, the Chamber of 
Deputies, is chosen by about two hundred thousand electors out 
of a population that numbers five millions of male adults ; the 
other, the Chamber of Peers, is created by the king, — a monstrous 
anomaly, and an insulting mockery. If the revolution of the 
three days was a protest against monarchical predominance and 
military coercion, Louis Philippe misrepresents it most flagrantly. 
By the army is he upheld, not by the nation. I have seen him, 
going to open the session of the legislature, closely guarded by 
twenty thousand bayonets. What the purpose is of the fortifica- 



PRESENT GOVERNMENT. 27 

tion of Paris, will become palpable in some future revolution. 
If the tens of millions buried under this vast cincture, destined to 
be levelled by popular wrath, had been expended upon railroads 
radiating from the capital (not to mention higher national wants), 
Paris would have been rendered impregnable, and France greatly 
forwarded in wealth and civilisation. The " throne surrounded 
by republican institutions," promised by Lafayette when he made 
Louis Philippe king, was the groundless hope of a veteran pa- 
triot, too single-minded to have forgotten the dream of his youth, 
and too short-sighted to discern how far it was then from realiza- 
tion. The fulfilment of the promise he confided to one, whose 
mental construction was the very opposite of his own, as well in- 
tellectually as morally. 

The present is a government of bayonets tempered by the 
Press. The Press, though not quite free, is an immense power, 
and its growth is a measure of French progress in sixty years. 
The people, though far yet from that maturity which self-govern- 
ment implies, do not require the semi-military rule of the Orleans 
Dynasty. Yet are their bonds not so heavy and tight but that 
they have in some directions quite a wide range of movement. 
And they have a healthful. abiding consciousness of their power 
to pull down the state, if ever again it should become grossly 
oppressive. It is utterly incalculable, what, by two such tri- 
umphant efforts as their two revolutions, a people gains in self- 
respect, and self-reliance, and hopeful self-trust, the basis of all 
moral superstructure, and therefore of all permanent self-govern- 
ment. 

ANTWERf, .Tine, 1841. 

In France there is little rural beauty. The country looks 
bald and meagre and lifeless. No clumps of trees, nor rose- 
sweetened cottages, nor shaiiy hamlets, betokening snug fire- 
sides and a quiet sympathy with nature. 'Twas cheering to get 



28 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

into Belgium. Here were the marks of a deeper order and more 
intelligent labor. On all sides cleanliness and thrift. The 
sightly, compact towns looked full of well-husbanded resources. 
From Courtrai, near the borders of France, to Antwerp, we 
passed, by railroad, for sixty miles through what seemed a fair 
rich garden, so smooth and minute is the tillage. The soil looked 
grateful to its working. 

It would almost appear that there had been a defeat of Nature's 
intent in this quarter of Europe; a territory has been split, 
which was so naturally adapted for unity. One cannot help 
thinking it a pity the Burgundian sovereignty had not lasted. 
Where there are now discordant French, Belgians, and Dutch, 
there might have been one homogeneous people of eight or ten 
millions, with breadth of territory, and strength and variety of 
resources, sufficient for an ample national development. Just at 
the period, towards the end of the fifteenth century, when a nation 
was forming and about to be knit together by Literature and the 
Arts, — for which it exhibited such aptitude, — the whole country, 
by the marriage of the heiress of the last of the Burgundians, 
passed into the hands of Austria, and thence by Charles V. was 
left to his son, Philip II. of Spain. The high spirit of the people 
would not brook the cruelties of this tyrant and his creature 
Alba, who wished to establish among them the Inquisition, that 
masterpiece of Satan's most inventive mood. In the famous 
revolt, only the northern provinces were successful. Belgium 
remained under the dominion of Spain a century longer, when it 
was re-transferred to Austria, from which it was finally wrested 
in the French Revolution, to be first incorporated into France, and 
then by the Congress of Vienna reunited, after a divorce of more 
than two centuries, to Holland. But during that long separation, 
the two, living under totally different influences, had naturally 
contracted habits that were reciprocally hostile. Holland was 
Protestant, Belgium, Catholic; and the language, which, under a 



ANTWERP. 29 



permanent union, might have been unfolded by the wants of a 
vigorous nation to take rank by the side of the cognate German, 
was broken into dialects, that of Holland becoming cultivated 
enough to be the medium of some literature, that of Belgium 
remaining the half-grown speech of the peasants and Bourgeois, 
and giving place in salons and palaces to the more refined tongue 
of its overshadowing Southern neighbor. It was now too late to 
make one nation of the Netherlands, and so, the marriage, 
brought about by neighbors through persuasions too well backed 
by power to be withstood, was soon dissolved, and Belgium was 
erected into an independent monarchy, under a new king, by the 
side of Holland, or, I should say, a separate monarchy; for when 
united, they had not the strength for independence, and now of 
course will even the more readily fall victims of greedy neigh- 
bors, whenever the beam of that very unsteady fixture called the 
balance of power shall be kicked. 

Antwerp has still much of the wealth and beauty it inherited 
from the olden time, when, with its two hundred thousand inha- 
bitants, it was, in commerce and opulence, the first among the 
cities of Europe ; and its merchant princes built up cathedrals 
and squares and palaces, for Rubens and Vandyke to people out 
of their procreative brains. The population is reduced now to 
seventy or eighty thousand, the port is content with a hundred 
vessels at a time instead of two thousand ; but the broad clean 
streets bordered with stately mansions are still here, and the 
cathedral, whose spire alone is a dower for a province; and the 
inhabitants, yet rich in fat lands and well-filled coffers, are still 
richer in the possession of some of the fairest offspring of their 
great fellow-townsman's genius. The potency of genius and art 
is here most forcibly exemplified. Take away Rubens and the 
Cathedral, and Antwerp would not be Antwerp. This tower, 
steadfast, light, fretted with delicate tracery, springing nearly four 
hundred feet from the ground, which it seems to touch no mcr3 



30 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



heavily than a swan about to take flight, is an unfading beauty 
shining daily on the hearts of the people, while the memory of 
Rubens and his presence in his gigantic handiwork are a perpe- 
tual image of greatness. To the passing stranger they are an 
adornment to the land, but to the natives a stay and brace to the 
very mind itself, keeping ever before them the reality of beauty 
and power, and fortifying them with the consciousness of kindred 
with genius and greatness. 

Antwerp has at this time high artists, Jacobs, Keyser, Waep- 
pers, who sit under the transparent shadow of this marvellous 
tower, and whose art attains a more juicy maturity in the sun of 
Rubens's genius. Their works sell at high prices as fast as they 
produce them. Love of art, blended in the hearts of the people 
with religion, is an element of their nature. The creations of 
their great painters illuminate the churches, and through the 
incense that ascends from the altar, beam upon the upturned 
countenance of the worshipper. In the public Museum are pre- 
served some of the best works of Rubens and Vandyke ; and in 
private dwellings are seen family portraits from their hands, fresh 
from the embalming touch of genius, twice-prized, — by personal 
and by national pride. 

In a rich private collection of old books and pictures, I have 
seen a set of engravings, bound up into several huge tomes of the 
greater part of Rubens's works. To behold thus at a single 
view, the collected product of such a spirit's life, is to have in 
one's hand a key to much of the mystery of the painter's art. 
This man's mind was an ever-teeming womb of light-dyed forms. 
These were the spontaneous absorbing growth of his brain. With 
him, existence could only be enjoyed, fulfilled, by delivering him- 
self of this urgent brood of brain-engendered pictures. What a 
wealth of invention and inexhaustible vigor! What fertility, and 
boldness, and breadth and fire ! What opulence and grandeur of 
imagination ! What skill in the marshalling of his legions ! 



CONTRASTS. 31 



What life in each head, in each figure, in each group ! And 
what a flood of beauty in his coloring ! 'Tis as if, for his great 
pictures, he had gathered into his brain the hues of a gorgeous 
sunset, and poured them upon the canvas. 

Among the features wherein old Europe differs from young 
America, none is more prominent than the large number of idlers 
in Europe. Capital being wanting in the United States, almost 
the universal energy is busied in supplying it ; in Europe it is 
abundant, and many live in industrial unproductiveness upon its 
moderate dividends. With us, it is hardly respectable to be idle ; 
here, only they who are so, enjoy the highest consideration. 
With us, gentility is confined to those who addict themselves to 
certain kinds of labor ; in Europe it excludes all who labor at all, 
except in the highest offices of the State. In " good society" 
here, you meet with neither lawyer, nor merchant, nor physician, 
not even with the clergy, for in Belgium, priests are drawn from 
the peasant and bourgeois classes, and their consecration is not 
believed to confer upon them nobility. Birth has hitherto been 
an almost indispensable passport into the highest circles, but 
money, aided by the stealthy progress of democratic ideas, is 
making breaches in the aristocratic entrenchments, and ere many 
generations, " good society" in Europe will present somethinglike 
the motley concourse that it does with us, where, the social ar- 
rangements having no support from the political, old families 
go down and new ones come up, and the power of a man on 
'Change is often the measure of his position in fashionable draw- 
ing-rooms. This is but the chaos of transition : the soul will in 
time assert its transcendant privileges. 

In Europe, notwithstanding occasional intermarriages, the aris- 
tocratic prestige still prevails against plebeian merit. In social 
longer than in political life, the nobility naturally retain a pre- 
dominance, that is of course exercised despotically. Although, 
since the invention of printing, the expansion of commerce, and 



32 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

the rapid development of industry and science, knowledge and 
wealth, the sources of the highest power in communities, have 
been passing out of the hands of the privileged few, still, social 
advantages, depending upon deep-rooted ideas, are the last to be 
forfeited, and the nobility throughout Europe, long after their ex- 
clusion from the high posts in the State, will look down upon the 
herd of plebeian aspirants to ton, just as the ancienne noblesse of 
France did upon the military upstarts of Napoleon, and do still 
upon the Court of Louis Philippe. And this from a real superi- 
ority of position. 

The nobility of Europe, — the early, and at first the rightful sole 
possessors of power as the originally strong men ; the acknow- 
ledged monopolists of social elevations ; the dispensers of place 
and patronage ; the recipients and in turn the fountains of honor ; 
in short, the controllers with kings of all high interests and lords 
of etiquette and manners, — acquired, by the cultivation of the 
stateliness growing out of courtly usages and the tone contracted 
from conscious superiority, an easy commanding style of bearing 
and intercourse, which was of a natural inward growth, the un- 
forced expression of their social rank and being. Now, as this 
social rank and being is no longer attainable by others, so neither 
are the modes of life, the style of manners, the segregation from 
the people, which were its natural products. All attempts there- 
fore on the part of those, who, since the breaking up of the mono- 
polies of knowledge and wealth, are now sharing their possession 
with the old nobility, to assume too their bearing and style, are and 
must be a bare assumption, a hollow imitation ; and not merely 
as such an inevitable failure, but one tainted with vulgarity, the 
essence of which is false pretension. So long as another standard 
than the feudal aristocratic is not set up as the measure of social 
position, there will be war between the old regime, which in its 
sphere was a genuine true thing, and the new, which being an 
apery of it, is a false thing. In the end, the old, no longer upheld 



ARISTOCRACY. 33 



by law, impoverished by idleness and debilitated by generations 
of luxurious inactivity, will have to succumb, and become socially 
extinct, or absorbed into the triumphant new, and pedigrees will 
grow confused, and the imagination cease to invest birth with 
virtue. 

In this conflict will for a time be aggravated the most repulsive 
quality of aristocratic life. The feeling of superiority over one's 
fellows, mere personal pride, will be still more cherished. Their 
children are already bred up to look upon themselves as better than 
all other children. Towards their fellow-men a sentiment rather 
of repulsion than sympathy is generated in the members of a 
privileged class. Instead of keeping their hearts open with liberal 
susceptibility to worth and excellence, they are ever on the alert 
to fend off" all others from contact with themselves. They form a 
narrow circle, living to themselves on sympathies of selfishness. 
These feelings, latent while their rank was undisputed, become 
active against plebeian encroachment ; while their plebeian rivals 
and imitators cultivate the same feeling as well from imitation, 
as to strengthen their new state against the aspiring multitude 
still below them. An offspring too of this conflict is Fashion, 
which is an effort to outvie exclusiveness, to be more tonish than 
haul ton itself. Fashion is a wingless aspiration after elegance ; 
a brazen usurpation ; a baseless pretension kept alive by quick 
changes of aspect ; an impertinent substitution of personality for 
principle ; an imposition of effrontery upon weakness ; a carica- 
ture of beauty ; a restless prosaic straining for an ideal ; a mock 
flower, bloomless, odorless and seedless. 

Although, in the large cities, the mimicry of European ways 
evolves out of our prosaic citizens an unavoidable portion of vul- 
garity, the corrective of republican self-respect is ever active ; 
and amidst much false aim and shallow endeavor, there is percep- 
tible a growing appreciation of the genuine and true. Already 
the aspiring nouveau riche feels that culture and taste are the 
3* 



34 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

essence of social excellence, and hastens to give his children the 
advantages himself has missed. Where there is natural suscep- 
tibility of polish, education and republican self-reliance tell at 
once upon the second generation, and at times, — such is the rich- 
ness of nature, — a man springs up from the workshop, and while 
by talent he attains to affluence, attains to grace and courteous 
propriety by native refinement and generosity ; and totally devoid 
of the grimaces, the sleek well-tailored outside, the money-jingling 
vulgarity of the parvenu, he takes his place as a gentleman with- 
out the English ordeal of three generations. We apply a practi- 
cal test to know what is good blood, and soon recognize him for 
what he is. Evidence is constantly thrown out of a tendency to- 
wards higher things. The intellectual lift up the tastes, and the 
spiritual the desires, for other wants than for furniture and equipages. 
As inequality in mental faculties among men is a law of nature, 
the idea of a " best society " is real, and will go on manifesting 
itself more and more distinctly, working constantly upward through 
impure materials. The mind will by degrees straighten itself 
into better proportions. Factitious and grossly-bottomed distinc- 
tions will be effaced. In our country we have compassed a vantage- 
ground of liberty, whence to ascend to higher platforms of social 
condition. Grossly do they underrate the worth of liberty, who 
regard security of person and property, equality before the law, 
freedom of speech and of printing, as its ripe fruit. These are 
but the foundation for a broader and more beautiful structure. 
Through them the mind will brace its wings and sharpen its vision 
for wider sweeps into the domain of the possible ; and expanding 
with unrestricted inter-communion, grow in brightness and benefi- 
cence. Proofs of this progress are discernible in the easier eman- 
cipation from soul-smothering customs, and in the longings and 
hopes of the freest minds. In this higher organization the gentle- 
man will of course not be wanting ; for no well-developed society 
could be without nim, in whom, as Spenser sings. 



BRUSSELS. 35 



** The gentle mind by gentle deed is known." 

Let those who regret the decay of the old-fashioned gentleman, 
because the new-fashioned one, being a coarse imitation of him, 
is, like all imitations, a failure, take hope, that there is one of a 
higher fashion possible and already forming, in whom polite- 
ness, being the offspring of love and beauty, shall cease borrow- 
ing of falsehood ; in whom refinement shall not be the superficial 
show of conventional discipline, but a spontaneous emanation 
from the purified mind ; courtesy be free from pride, and elevation 
be enjoyed by right neither of pedigree nor Plutus, but solely by 
natural endowment, be acknowledged as ungrudgingly as differ- 
ence of stature, and sit on the possessor as unconsciously as flow- 
ers on stalks, and like them dispense beauty all around. 

BoppART, on the Rhine, July, 1841. 

After spending six weeks most pleasantly at Antwerp, we 
turned our steps towards the Rhine, stopping but a day in Brus- 
sels, to get a glimpse of the pictures in the Museum, a look at 
the painted windows of the Church of St. Gudule, and some 
insight into the manufacture of Brussels lace. We didn't care 
to see Palaces. We had been paced through those of Paris and 
its neighborhood, and Palaces are all alike ; on t:he outside, huge, 
overgrown, depopulated-looking edifices, and in the inside, suite 
upon suite of lofty rooms and halls, where upholstery, with its 
glittering gildings and silks, keeps repeating its short circle of 
adornment. Brussels is a cheerful, sunny city, but it is always 
associated in my mind with its little ambition of being a little 
Paris, and with its sub-population of questionable and vulgar 
English, that taint its atmosphere. I was told at Antwerp of an 
Englishman and his family, who came there to live, although a 
dull town compared with Brussels, because, as he said, he had a 
good name at home, and he wouldn't have it blasted by a resi- 
dence at Brussels. 



36 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

From Brussels steam carried us in a few hours through the 
fat, well-tilled land to Liege, the Sheffield of Belgium. The 
railroad not being finished beyond Liege, we there took post-horses. 
The country all about Liege lifts itself briskly up into hills, and 
the road thence to Aix-la-Chapelle offers lively landscapes to 
the traveller's eye. Before reaching Aix we passed the Prussian 
frontier. After fifteen years I found myself again in Germany : 
the strong, rich tones of the language came back familiarly to 
my ears. They came laden with memories of kindness, and 
enjoyments, and profit. My re-entrance into Germany was one 
of the happiest hours of the journey ; nor was it marred by vexa- 
tions at the Prussian custom-house^ through which we were 
allowed to pass after a nominal search. It is one of the import- 
ant events in a traveller's career, the crossing of a boundary. 
Another variety of the species man, with new fixtures and envi- 
ronments. Another people, another language, another look to 
the land and everything on it. Other sights and other sounds to 
the freshly busied senses ; and to the interior mind, — alive in 
each region with its peculiar heroes and benefactors, — other 
inmates. History unrolls another leaf of her illuminated testa- 
ment, and we tell over again another treasure she has bequeathed 
us. 

In Aix-la-Chapelle^ the birth and burial place of Charlemagne, 
famous since the Romans for its sulphur baths, we spent but a 
night, and continued our way to strike the Rhine at Cologne. 
Thence to Gottingen was, by the nearest route through West- 
phalia, hardly more than a two days' journey. It would have 
been but a melancholy pleasure to re-visit the noble old Univer- 
sity, now made ignoble by the base-mindedness of her rulers. 
What a fall, with her seven hundred students, from her palmy 
state in 1 824-25, when she counted over fifteen hundred ; 
and when, drawn from all quarters of the globe by her high 
renown, we sometimes assembled together under the Cathedra of 



GOTTINGEN AND WEIMAR. 37 



a single Professor, listeners from North America and from South 
America, from England and from Italy, from France and from 
Sweden, from Russia and from Switzerland, from Poland and 
from every State in Germany. The galaxy of teachers she then 
had, the successors of others as eminent, the cowardly policy 
since pursued towards her, has prevented from being renewed. 
Gottingen has ceased to be what Napoleon called her, " I'Univer- 
site de I'Europe." She has dwindled into provincialism. — And 
beyond was Weimar, enwreathed to all cultivated imaginations 
with a unique glory. In his youth, the Grand Duke Charles 
Augustus, — a natural leader among men, for fifty years the com- 
panion of Goethe, — belted his little Capital round with the bright- 
est stars of German genius. During his long life they illuminated 
and refined his court, and were a blessing to his people ; and 
since his death, their sparkling names form a diadem round his, 
that outshines the crowns of haughty Kings. At the time of my 
visit in 1825, the Grand Duke and his congenial Duchess, and 
the greatest of his poetic band, Goethe, were still alive j and over 
the hospitalities of the Palace, the remarkable beauty of the ladies 
of his court threw a fascination that made it like a fairy castle. — 
Still further was Dresden, with its natural charms and its treasures 
of Art. But I was not now to behold those well remembered spots. 
Our destiny rules us most despotically when our will seems freest. 
We arrived at Cologne early enough in the afternoon to go out 
and look at the Cathedral, which, finished, would have been, as 
well from its size as its beauty, the foremost among Gothic 
Churches. Most of the Gothic Cathedrals are, like this, unfin- 
ished. The conceptions of their artists were loftier than the 
power or will of those who supplied the means for their execution. 
Their incompleteness is symbolical of the short-comings of the 
noblest minds in their aspirations. Our road now lay up the 
Rhine, but the river only enjoys the embrace of its hills, and the 
animatmg company of the old castles that crown them, between 



38 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Bonn and Mayence. Bonn is twelve miles above Cologne. Here, 
on my way from Gottingen fifteen years before, coming down the 
Rhine, partly on foot, before the day of steamboats in Germany, 
I had stopped, with an English fellow-traveller and student, to see 
Niebuhr and A. W. Schlegel, who were Professors in the Uni- 
versity of Bonn. Schlegel kept us waiting some time in a neat 
drawing-room, where hung a portrait of Madame de Stael. He 
then came in hurriedly, adjusting the tie of his cravat. He was 
affable and lively, and in his dress, bearing and conversation, 
seemed anxious to sink the Professor and appear the man of 
the world. Niebuhr was out, but came in an hour to the 
Hotel to see us. He w^s a tall, striking, man and spoke English 
perfectly. The sight of an American seemed to excite his mind. 
He plied me with questions about our institutions and customs. 
Doubtless his thoughts were often busied and puzzled with the 
new historical phenomenon of the great Republic, whose huge 
bulk was heaving itself up portentously in the far west. But 
Niebuhr was not the man to seize its significance or embrace its 
grandeur. His mind was exegetical and critical, rather than 
constructive and prophetic. 

We are now in the heart of Rhenish Prussia. The civil 
government of Prussia is after the military model. The king is 
the commander-in-chief of the nation, and the schoolmaster is his 
drill-sergeant. The boys are taught in such a way that the men 
shall fall readily into the ranks of obedience. A uniform is put 
upon their minds, and, as with the rank and file of a regiment, 
the uniformity is more looked to than the fitness. The govern- 
ment does all it can to save men the pain of thought and choice, 
and if it could would do everything. The officers of administra- 
tion having the intelligence and industry of the cultivated German 
mind, and these being everywhere the German solidity and hon- 
esty, the system bears some good fruit, such virtue is there in 
order and method, though only of the mechanical sort. Prussia 



THE GERMANS. 39 



is a well-managed estate, n6t a well-governed country ; for good 
government implies a recognition of the high nature of humanity, 
the first want of which is freedom. The only basis whereon the 
moral being of man can be built up is individual independence. 
To reach that higher condition of freedom, where he shall be 
emancipated from the tyranny of self, of his own passions, he 
needs first of all to be free from that of his fellows. The one 
freedom is only possible through the other. 

That the Germans are a breed that can keep pace with the 
best in the development of civilisation, they have given manifold 
proof in achievements by word and deed. They are a strong- 
brained, deep-hearted race. What creative power have they not 
exhibited in letters, in science, in Art ! With what soul and 
steadfastness they backed their mighty Luther, in his great strife 
for mental independence ! How they rose, like a giant from his 
sleep, against French usurpation, and with Leipzic paid Napoleon 
for Jena ! The conditions were reversed. At Jena, Napoleon, 
though with dementing egotism he had set a crown upon his head, 
was still the leader of a freshly emancipated people warrino- 
against old tyrannies : at Leipzic he was the hardened despot, 
with no instruments but his legions, and no props to his vulgar 
throne but force and fear ; while the monarchs of Germany and 
Russia were upborne on the hearts of the liberty-seeking people. 
The sceptred weaklings, whose capitals had been a prey to the 
conqueror, became suddenly strong with the strength of wrath- 
swollen multitudes. This wrath is ever ready to be rekindled. 
Its next outburst will not be against foreign oppressors. 

At Bonn we stopped but to change horses. Now it is that the 
Rhine discloses its treasures. Two or three miles above Bonn, 
we passed under the ancient Castle of Godesberg ; a little further 
that of Rolandseck ; opposite, on the other side of the water, the 
Drachenfels gives life to the "Seven Mountains;" and midway 
between them, lying softly in the low river, is the Island with the 



40 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

old Convent of Nounenwerth. Around are green valleys, and 
plentiful fields, and grape-mantled steeps, and frequent villages 
and compact towns. And thus, the whole way from Bonn to 
Mayence, you drive through a double population. Above, the 
sides of the castle-crowned hills are alive with mailed cavalcades, 
bugles are winding from the turrets, fair ladies are leaning over 
parapets waving their sweet welcomes and farewells ; while be- 
lov/, through the tranquil movements of a secure industry, the 
noiseless labors of tillage, the hum of busy towns, you roll smoothly 
forward on a macadamized road, and try to stir up your phleg- 
matic postillion to a race with a steamboat abreast of you on the 
river. To eyes at all open to natural beauty, this region, un- 
peopled, rude and naked, were a feast ; but twice-touched as it 
is by the productive hand of man, the broken shadows of ancient 
strongholds checkering the turfed flanks of the cannon-guarded 
fortress ; the images of spires, of cottages, of wooded heights, of 
ruins, of rocky precipices, of palaces, all playing together in the 
ripple of the sinuous stream ; the old river, fresh and lively as in 
the days of Arminius, with its legends, its history, and its warm 
present life ; senses, thought, imagination, all addressed at once 
amid scenes steeped in beauty ; — 'tis a region unmatched, and 
worth a long journey to behold. 

As we approached Coblentz, Ehrenbreitstein, the Gibraltar of 
Germany, lifted high its armed head, frowning towards France. 
The next morning we were again on the enchanted road, and in 
two hours reached Boppart. Turning up hill to the right, just on 
entering the town, we ascended to a large substantial old pile 
directly behind and above it. This was formerly the convent of 
Marienberg, for noble ladies, most solidly and commodiously 
built for a household of two hundred ; seated in a valley between 
hills, with shady walks, and springs, and fountains, and broad 
terraces, whence you look over the old town, founded by Drusus, 
into the river, now enlivened almost hourly with sociable steam- 



THE WATER-CURE 41 



boats. The convent has been converted into a water-cure esta- 
blishment. While at Antwerp several small works on the water- 
cure had fallen into my hands, and impressed my mind at once 
almost to conviction with the truth of its principles. I will en- 
deavor to give you a sketch of what it is and what it does. 1 
cannot better begin than with an account of my own daily pro- 
ceeding. 

At five in the morning I am waked up by a bath-attendant. 
Having stripped the narrow bed, he lays on the bare mattress 
a thick blanket, wherein he wraps me closely from neck to heels ; 
then another blanket doubled is laid on and tightly tucked in, and 
then another, and then a light feather bed. This is fitly called 
being packed up. In about an hour I begin to perspire ; where- 
upon the window is opened to let in fresh air, and half a tumbler 
of cold water is administered, which draught, repeated every 
quarter of an hour, promotes perspiration. After perspiring for 
forty or fifty minutes, I am unpacked, get streaming out of the 
blankets into an empty bath-tub at the bed-side, when instantly a 
couple of large buckets of cold water are poured over my head 
and shoulders. For a minute or two my hands and the attend- 
ant's are swiftly plied all over the surface, as if to rub in the 
water. Then comes a thorough dry rubbing with a coarse linen 
sheet, and after dressing quickly, a walk abroad for half an hour 
or more to support and hasten re-action, drinking the while from 
the fountain two or three glasses of water. On the breakfast- 
table are wheat and rye bread, butter, milk, and water, and fruit 
for those who choose it ; no tea, nor coffee, nor anything warm. 
Between eleven and twelve I take a sitting-bath of from fifteen to 
twenty minutes' duration, on coming out of which I go up to the 
top of the hills as if the muscles that had been immersed were 
turned into wings. Two or three more tumblers of water are 
drunk during the exercise. Dinner, at one, is never smoking 
hot, and consists for the most part of beef, mutton, and fowls 



42 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

roasted or boiled, with vegetables, followed by a simple dessert. 
No spices are used in cooking, and water is the only beverage. 
Bathing re-commences about four, a long interval being prescribed 
after each meal. My afternoon bath is generally what is called 
a staub-bad, literally, a dust-bath, which is in fact a shower-bath, 
except that the shower, instead of falling from above, comes late- 
rally from circular tubes in the midst of which you stand, and 
which, the moment the water is let on, pour upon you a thousand 
fine streams. Resolution must be well seconded by quick 
friction with the hands, to keep you within this refrigerating circle 
two or three minutes. After this is the best time for a long stroll 
over the hills or along the shores of the Rhine. Supper, between 
six and seven, is much the same as breakfast ; nothing hot, nothing 
stimulating. All meals are alike in the voracity of appetite with 
which they are eaten. I wear all day over the stomach a water- 
band or compress, — a double fold of coarse linen, six or seven 
inches wide and about twenty long, half wrung out in cold water, 
over which is tied a ary one of the same material and thickness, 
a little broader and meeting round the body. This, excluding the 
air, prevents evaporation from the wet bandage, and keeps it 
always warm. The compress is re- wet every two or three hours. 
Its effect is, to draw more life into the weakened stomach. 

A similar course is daily followed by the rest of the inmates. 
Instead of the affusion from buckets, most plunge directly into the 
full-bath after the sweating in the morning. Some are wrapt in 
a wet sheet, within the blankets, in which they lie about an hour. 
Then there is the potent douche, a stream of two to four inches 
diameter, falling from ten to twenty feet perpendicularly, which is 
taken when the body has become invigorated and the skin open- 
ened by the other applications. There are, moreover, local baths ; 
foot-baths, head-baths, eye-baths. 

The number of patients in this establishment at present is about 
eighty, with all kinds of chronic maladies, — gout, rheumatism. 



THE WATER-CURE. 43 



neuralgia, dyspepsia, deafness, lameness, paralysis, &c. Fill up 
the &c. with every name that has been coined to express the 
bodily afflictions of man, and not one that is curable, but can be 
cured by means of water. By means of water, note that ; for 
water can cure no disease ; it can but help or force the body itself 
to cure it. What more does medical Art profess to do ? No 
intelligent physician aims at aught but so to rouse or direct the 
vis medicalrix natures, the curative force of nature, that it may- 
throw off disease. To his lancet, his purgatives, his emetics, his 
narcotics, his stimulants, he ascribes a purely secondary agency, 
that of touching the spring of life in a way that it shall rebound 
against the evil that presses it. All his appliances and efforts and 
doses have but one single aim, namely, to act on the vital force. 
In awakening, seconding, guiding this, consists his whole skill. 
Herein, then, the water and drug systems are alike. Most unlike 
are they in the innocence and efficacy of their means, and in the 
success of their endeavors. 

Patients are here, as at mineral watering places, on account 
of chronic diseases, that is, diseases that have taken up their abode 
in the body, because the body has not vigor left to eject them. 
1 hese complaints the Faculty hardly ever profess to eradicate. In 
most patients so afflicted, disease and the Doctor have a joint life- 
estate. Change of air, temperance, quiet, diet, are the alleviating 
prescriptions to some. Permanent restoration is seldom promised 
by the upright physician. Priesnitz and his disciples undertake 
to cure, and do cure, many such ; and by means of water nearly 
all are curable, where there is constitutional vitality enough for 
re-action, and no organic lesion. The process is as simple as 
nature's laws. The world will soon wonder, as it has done at 
other revelations of genius, why it was so long undiscovered. 
Priesnitz has revealed the power there is in water. . With this 
one agent he can co-work with all the processes and movements 
of nature in the human organism. He can draw the vital stream 



44 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

from one part to another ; he can unload the congested blood- 
vessels ; he can quicken or slacken the action of the heart ; he 
can elevate or depress the nervous energy. And his agent, in this 
at once subtle and powerful co-operation, is not a poison, as is 
almost every drug, never weakens, as does every bleeding, but is 
a pure nourishing element, as precious to the body as the vital air 
itself, and having with its every texture such sympathy, that four 
parts out of five of the constituents of the blood are water. In 
this consists much of its virtue as a curative means. It is not 
enough that it be cold : Priesnitz rejects all mineral waters, and 
even salt sea-water. 

The first step towards a restoration of health is a re-subjection 
of the body to natural laws, as regards food, drink, air, and exer- 
cise. Further ; as the vital energy is the final source of restora- 
tion, it is necessary, when disease has become fixed in the body, 
that this energy be directed against it with undivided aim. Hence, 
there must be withdrawal from business and care and serious 
mental occupation ; and therefore it is, that the cure of chronic 
complaints can, in most cases, only be undertaken with hope of 
success at a water-cure establishment. These first conditions 
being satisfied, under which the body begins at once to feel fresh 
vigor, the next step is, to accelerate this invigoration. The forti- 
fying effects of cold bathing are universally known. Without 
considering now the various forms of its application, devised by 
the sagacity of Priesnitz, the mere loss of caloric in a cold bath 
necessarily stimulates the appetite. More food is called for to 
supply the lost heat. The quickened respiration in the bath and 
during the rapid exercise it provokes, supply a correspondent in- 
crease of oxygen. As Liebig simply and beautifully explains, 
animal heat is the result of the combination within the body be- 
tween the oxygen brought in through the lungs, and the carbon 
and hydrogen in the food. The oxygen consumes, literally burns 
up, the waste of the body, the dead particles that have served their 



THE WATER-CURE. 45 



purpose of nourishing the vital activity. The fire burns more 
briskly. By the increase of food, fresh material is furnished more 
rapidly ; the burning of the old keeps pace through the increased 
influx of oxygen ; and thus the transformations in the body, the 
source and index of health, go on with increased quickness, and 
the strength grows in proportion. A man with a good fund of 
vitality left, who takes three or four cold baths and drinks a dozen 
glasses of cold water daily, will eat just double his usual quantity, 
and that of the plainest fare, and with a relish that he never felt 
at the costliest banquet, and a sweetness and fulness of flavor, that 
recall the time of his fast-growing boyhood. 

'Tis a familiar fact, that if a fragment of bone, for instance, in 
case of fracture, be left loose and unknit up when the fracture 
heals, it will be thrown out to the surface by the vital force. 
Where there is life enough, the same self-purifying, self-protect- 
ing eflbrt will be made against whatever arrests or disturbs the 
vital process, against every form of disease therefore. The third 
step in the proceeding of Priesnitz is, to encourage and assist this 
tendency by more specific means than the mere addition of strength 
by cold bathing. 

How is the determination from the centre to the surface to be 
promoted ? 

By action on the skin through the sweating in blankets, and the 
cDaking in the wet sheet inclosed by blankets. The power ot 
these applications cannot be conceived but by one who has seen 
them, I may add, felt them. An activity is awakened in the skin 
unknown to it before, and this without any foreign or hostile appli- 
ances. Under the air-tight blankets softly oozes out the perspira- 
tion ; the wet sheet sucks at the whole surface, like a gentle all- 
embracing poultice. The skin is in a glow — a glow which it 
owes to no heat but that beneath it. The life of the whole body 
is drawn to and towards it. In this state of heightened animation 
it re-acts against the cold bath with alacrity. One or other of 



46 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



these processes — according to the disease, condition or tempera- 
ment of the patient — repeated daily, keeps the currents, so to 
speak, always setting outwardly. The skin, that great auxiliary 
of the lungs, grows elastic, regains its functions, that had become 
lamed by the destructive practice of swathing in flannel, and the 
neglect of cold ablutions, needed daily for the whole surface as 
much as for the face. Chronic congestions and inflammations are 
thus gradually relieved ; the system feels lightened. Morbific 
matter is expelled. That it is morbific, is often known by its 
odor and color. Frequently, too, what medicines have been taken, 
sometimes years before, is discovered by the odor of the perspira- 
tion ; as valerian, iodine, assafsetida, sulphur, mercury. 

The sitting bath performs the important part of drawing the 
blood from the brain, and of invigorating the great nerves of the 
stomach and bowels, which in nearly all chronic complaints have 
become weakened by drugs, heating food and drinks, and seden- 
tary habits. When, by the sweating or the wet sheet, the sitting 
bath, and copious daily draughts of cold water, the skin has been 
opened and animated, the internal skin — the lining membrane of 
the lungs and digestive organs — stimulated, and all the functions 
mvigorated, so that the system is restored in a degree to its pris- 
tine power of resistance, then is applied the most vigorous of all 
the water agents, the douche, which rouses to the utmost the ner- 
vous energy, and thus contributes much towards putting the body 
in a state to cope with its foe. 

Now the aim of all these purifying energizing processes is, to 
bring on a crisis, that is, an effort of the system to rid itself of the 
disease which obstructs and oppresses it. The crisis is, in fact, 
in strong cases, an acute attack, taking the form of diarrhoea, more 
or less active or prolonged, or of vomiting, or cutaneous eruption, 
or fever. Sometimes these symptoms come one after the other, 
or even several at once. With knowledge and judgment, the 
crisis is guided surely to a cure. When the disease is not of long 



THE WATER-CURE. 47 



standing, the functional derangement not being firmly established, 
the cure is effected of course much more quickly and often with- 
out apparent crisis. On the other hand, in aggravated cases, 
when the body, in the phrase of Priesnitz, is very full of bad stuff, 
the patient may have to go through two or three crises, before his 
system is perfectly purged of disease. Once through the crisis, 
the patient is cured, cured effectually, radically, not apparently 
and temporarily, but permanently and absolutely. The nervous 
energy is renovated, the skin is restored to the full performance 
of its important functions, the digestive apparatus works perfectly, 
the blood flows actively and impartially, no morbid condition lurks 
in any of the tissues, the transformations go on briskly and smooth- 
ly, life plays lightly and evenly through the whole organism ; the 
man is well. With healthy habits he can keep so all his days, 
and end them with an easy natural death, not the hard unnatural 
one that most are doomed to, dying of disease and the Doctor. 

Visitors are astonished at the cheerfulness of the inmates. A 
merrier company is not to be found on the joyous Rhine. Such 
a happy Hospital is a phenomenon. No brilliant balls, nor luxu- 
J-ious lounges, nor dainty viands, nor fragrant wines, nor gambling 
saloons, are needed here as at the neighboring Ems and Wiesba- 
den, to charm away ennui and make the day endurable. Noon 
drives away morning, and evening noon, ere we have done with 
them ; and when we lay our heads down at night, so quick and 
dream-tight is sleep, that morning is upon us again as if he had 
but waited for the closing of our lids, and nature had compressed 
hours into moments that they might lie weightless on our brains. 
Such is the virtue of water, which at once soothes and exhilarates. 
It must be remembered, too, that the invalids here are all outcasts, 
unfortunates sentenced by Doctors' edicts to perpetual banishment 
from the realm of health. Hence the slowness of the cure, which 
few who have the time have the perseverance to complete. Most 
of us are impatient if complaints of years' standing are not washed 



48 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

out in a few weeks. Thus, but a small number earn the full 
benefit of a radical cure ; more are partially relieved of their 
pains; the rest, and largest proportion, only get strength and 
habits wherewith the better to bear them. 

But it is in acute diseases, that the triumphs of the water-cure 
are most signal and astoundino-. Here its results look like mira- 
cles, so rapid are they, so regenerative, so complete. 

I have said, that the crisis is an acute attack. On the other 
hand, an acute disease is but a crisis brought about by the vital 
force of nature, unexalted by the water-processes. Priesnitz 
cures all such, rapidly, with ease, with certainty. What he is 
always striving to produce, is here brought to his hand. An acute 
disease being a strenuous effort that the organism makes to throw 
out the enemy, Priesnitz comes in helpfully, by cooling the skin 
and opening its pores. This sounds very simple and easy. Is 
there in Christendom a physician who can cool the skin and open 
the pores at will in a burning fever ? Not all the schools and 
systems of all countries through long ages of experiment and woe, 
have discovered the nature of fevers and the art of treating them. 
In spite of his tonics, his diapharetics, his antiphlogistics, his 
lancet. Death strides past the Doctor, and seizes upon the young 
and the robust, as boldly and surely now as a thousand years 
ago. Let the world, then, rejoice. Glad tidings have come from 
GraefFenberg. Someof the scourges of mankind ar^ stayed. The 
cholera, the scarlei-fever, the small-pox, are shorn of their terrors. 
At this proclamation some will smile, some will chide, the most 
will ejaculate incredulous. Facts upon facts are there, and thou- 
sands have witnessed them and spread afar the news of the bless- 
ing, and those who have looked at them studiously, know why 
they are and that they must be. Inflammations and fevers are 
perfectly manageable by Priesnitz and his pupils. What is the 
glory of Harvey and Jenner to that of the German peasant ? 

From the times of Hippocrates and Galen, down to those of 



THE WATER-CURE. 49 



Currie and Hoffman, many are the Doctors, as set forth in the 
books, brought out by Priesnitz's doings, who have cured diseases 
with water. But the shrewdest of them had only glimpses of its 
power. Nature, as is her way, has constantly thrown out hints 
to them, and temptations with facts ; but not in one of them be- 
fore Priesnitz did the facts inbreed thoughts, that, wrought upon 
by the awakened spirit of research, led it on to the detection of 
the laws, whereby this one element becomes a curative means of 
an efficacy beyond the liveliest hopes of medical enthusiasts. 
Still, " the Faculty " say, forsooth, there is nothing new in 
Priesnitz's pretended discoveries. Is there nothing new in put- 
ting a patient daily for months through four or five cold baths, 
one or two of them while his skin is dripping with perspiration 
produced by his own warmth, and thereby curing him radically 
of the gout ? Is it not new to thrust a man delirious into a cold 
shallow bath, and there keep him for nine hours with constant 
friction on his legs and pouring of cold water on his head, and 
thus to restore him in twenty-four hours ? Who ever before put 
a child with a brain fever through forty wet sheets in as many 
successive half hours, and by so doing completely subdued in 
three days a disease, whose cure would have been doubtful with 
drugs, in three weeks. This magical wet-sheet itself, what a 
discovery ! Is it not a stupendous novelty to regard fevers as, in 
all cases, but the manifestation of the struggle going on within 
between the vital principle and a disease which threatens it ? 
And is it not a new feeling, in the summoned healer, to approach 
the fever-heated patient with clearest confidence, looking on the 
fever as a sign of vital activity, which with a single agent he can 
uphold and helpfully direct to a rapid and safe issue ? instead of 
going to work against the vital principle with his drugs, — which 
draw it off from its struggle with the disease to fight themselves, — 
and with his life-tapping lancet, inwardly trembling, — if he be 
clear-headed and conscientious, — for the slow result, doubting of 

4 



50 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

his whole procedure, coming back daily for weeks with the tre- 
pidation of one who is tussling in the dark with Death for a human 
being, and often overwhelmed at the sudden victory of his foe, 
by the conviction, that himself has opened to him the path. I 
refer now to the best of the medical guild, the few men of thought, 
feeling, and integrity. Such will feel, how sadly true is the self- 
reproach of Faust, who, on being hailed with honor and thanks 
by the peasants for having, a young assistant to his medical 
father, saved so many of them from the plague, exclaims that 
their praise sounds like scorn, and relates to his companion the 
blind, desperate nature of their treatment, concluding as 

follows : — 

And thus with mo&t infernal pills, 
Among these valleys and these hills. 

Far worse than did the Pest we blazed. 
Thousands did I the poison give ; 
They withered off, and I must live 

To hear th' audacious murderers praised.* 

The common crowd of legalized botchers walk through their 
daily mischievous routine, partly in ignorant thoughtlessness, 
partly in insensibility. 

" The whole baseless calamitous system of drug-poisoning," 
says a German expounder of Priesnitz's practice, " which has 
already snatched away many millions, had its origin in the mis- 
conception of primary or acute diseases. Because people did not 
perceive that these abnormal feverish conditions are only efforts 
at healing which the organism makes, they mistook these fever- 
symptoms for the disease itself, and finding that they could be 

* So haben wir mit hollischen Latwergen 
In diesen Th'alern, diesen Bergen, 
Weit schlimmer als die Pest getobt. 
Ich habe selbst den Gift an tausende gegeben ; 
Sie welkten hin, ich muss erleben, 
Dass man die frechen Morder lobt. 



THE WATER-CURE. 51 



allayed by blood-letting and drugging, they prized this fatal dis- 
covery. Then sprang up from this poisonous seeding a whole 
host of terrible deadly maladies. But because the afflictions did 
not show themselves immediately, within a few weeks after the 
medicinal suppression of the acute disease, no one had a thought 
that the drugs and bleeding were the cause of them." The same 
author thus writes of inflammation in case of wounds I — " In order 
to heal a wound, the organism must form on the part where the 
wound is, new flesh, new vessels for the new capillaries, &c. To 
be able to form this flesh, it is necessary that the material for it, — 
the forming sap, which is the blood, — be led to the part in abnor- 
mal quantity. Thus, too, plants heal an injury by sending to the 
injured spot sap in unusual abundance. Through this abnormal 
blood-life, increased warmth is produced in the part to be healed, 
which warmth, however, only then gets to real inflammation when 
the instinct of the wounded person for cold water inwardly and 
outwardly is not satisfied. Allopathy, in its stolidity, looks upon 
this streaming of the blood to the wounded part, and the exalta- 
tion of life therein to the point of heat, as disease, as something 
which must be removed, and lets blood. Hereupon, notwithstand- 
ing, the organism continues to send blood to the injured part, 
where it is needed, and the Doctor continues to let blood, some- 
times until the extremities become bloodless and cold, and the 
patient often dies of weakness, — as is also the case with internal, 
so called, inflammations." 

These views of fever and inflammation have been deduced 
from the facts observed and brought to light by Priesnitz. Jf any 
like them were ever before entertained, it was but in a partial, 
feeble way. They have never formed part of the medical creed ; 
they have not been made the foundation of a school. As great as 
between the momentary illumination of lightning and the light of 
the day-long sun, is the difference between having a thought pass 
through the mind, and having it planted there till it grow to a 



52 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

fruitful conviction. Hereby is the Healing Art become, for the 
first time, what all Art ought to be, the handmaid of Nature, and 
thus, at last, what it never before was, a genuine healing art, and 
a blessing to humanity. 

This broad, absolute condemnation of the drug and lancet prac- 
tice, is at any rate not new. Hear some of the most famous 
physicians speak of their Art. 

Van Helmoiit says : — " A murder-loving devil has taken pos- 
session of the medical chairs ; for none but a devil could recom- 
mend to physicians blood-letting as a necessary means." 

Boerhave : — " When one compares the good performed on the 
earth by half a dozen true sons of ^sculapius since the rise of 
the Art, with the evil done among men by the countless number 
of Doctors of this trade, one will doubtless think, that it were 
much better if there never had been a physician in the world." 

Jleil ; — " It is perfectly clear that we do not know the nature 
of fever, and that the treatment thereof is nothing more than 
naked empiricism. — The variety of opinions is a proof that the 
nature of the subject is not yet clear ; for when the truth is once 
found, certainty takes the place of hypothesis in every sound 
mind." 

Rush : — " We have not only multiplied diseases, but have 
made them more fatal." 

Majendie : — " In the actual condition of medical science, the 
physician mostly plays but the part of simple spectator of the sad 
episodes which his profession furnishes him." 

Billing : — " I visited the different schools, and the students of 
each hinted, if they did not assert, that the other sects killed tlieir 
patients." 

Water too can kill, or it could not cure. Yet may it fearlessly 
be affirmed, that where one will be hurt or killed by the water- 
treatment, one hundred will be by drugs. Relatively, the water- 
cure is without danger ; nay, it is so absolutely. Knowledge is 



THE WATER-CURE. 53 



needed to do anything, even to grow cabbages. An idiot may- 
break his neck falling down steps safely used by thousands daily. 
But conceive knowledge with poisons for its instrument, and the 
same knowledge with one pure agent, and able with that one to 
bring out any and all the effects aimed at by the lancet and whole 
pharmacopoeia. In the skilfullest hands, arsenic, prussic acid, 
copperas, oil of vitriol, mercury, iodine, strychnine, all medical 
poisons in constant use, suddenly cause death at times, to the con- 
founding of the practitioner. Their remote effects in shortening 
and embittering life, are incalculable, unimaginable. In short, 
the water-cure, at once simple and philosophical, is dangerous only 
where there is clumsiness, rashness, or stupidity : drugs, virulent 
and treacherous, are full of immediate danger in the most pru- 
dent and sagacious hands, and are besides charged with evils dis- 
tant and insidious. 

By means of water, then, whose energizing and healing power 
has been to the full revealed by Priesnitz, chronic diseases, till 
now deemed hopeless, are eradicable, and acute ones cease to be 
alarming. By the thorough cure of acute attacks, chronic com- 
plaints, — mostly the consequence of suppressed or half-cured acute 
ones, — will be much fewer. Through the same influence, acute 
will become less frequent. Were this discovery to cause no other 
change of habits, the substitution of cold for warm baths and the 
general practice of cold bathing, will alone produce such bodily 
fortification as to ward off an immense amount of disease. But 
the change cannot stop there. Wedded as men are to routine, 
hugging custom as if life itself were intertwined with its plaits, 
still they do by degrees let in the light of new truths. When one 
of her great laws is discovered. Nature smiles joyfully and benig- 
nantly, as a mother on the unfolding of her infant's mind, and in 
man's heart is reflected the smile, the harbinger of new blessings. 
This discovery is already hailed by tens of thousands as pregnant 
with immeasurable good. It is so simple, so intelligible, so ac- 



54 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

cessible, that it must spread its blessings in spite of prejudice, 
interest, and ignorance. 

Health is nearly banished from Christendom. Even among 
those who lead an outdoor life of healthful labor, there is the de- 
bilitating counteraction of stimulants, in drink, in food, in tobacco. 
The wealthier classes are more the victims of drugs, the poor of 
alcohol. These two curses, poisoning the sources of life, have 
diminished the stature and strength of the race, far more even than 
vice and poverty, of which too alcohol is a prolific parent. That 
there is this diminution is proved, among other evidence, by the 
falling off in the standard of stature for soldiers in the principal 
countries of Europe, in England, in France, in Germany. 
Through these poisons, the natural instincts of appetite have been 
depraved. There is a general vitiation of the palate through the 
perverted nerves, brought about by the universal use of all kinds 
of foreign stimulants, medicinal, spirituous, and spicy. Water is 
deemed good to mix with spirits and wine, and milk with tea and 
coffee. Pure, they are insipid, and so deep has reached the cor- 
ruption, that it is quite a common belief, that water is unwhole- 
some ! There is a general craving for stimulants. They are 
esteemed temperate who use them only at meals ! Their hurtful 
effects upon the health, temper, strength and morals, cannot be 
estimated. Against all this, Nature protests by the sighs of 
weakness, the groans of disease, the pangs of conscience, and the 
agonies of premature death. Priesnitz would seem to be commis- 
sioned to re-utter the commands of Nature, to rouse mankind to 
a sense of its growing physical degeneracy, and to open the path 
towards health, refreshed life and enjoyment. Priesnitz has de- 
monstrated, that for the preservation of health and restoration from 
disease there is an efficacy, a virtue in Water, hitherto undreamt 
of; that all kinds of stimulants, under all circumstances whether 
in disease or in health, are always falsehoods, disguised like worse 
moral lies under cajoling flatteries ; and this he enforces with the 



FRANKFORT. 55 



eloquence of cheerfullest, sweetest sensations, renovating, I might 
almost say, re-creating, the nervous system, and thus putting 
literally new life into the body. 

Geneva, September, 1841. 

The last of July, after a six weeks' experiment of the water- 
cure, we left Boppart. These few weeks have made, I may say, 
an epoch in my life- It is not the bodily strength I gained, — and 
the time was much too short for a full restoration to health, — but 
the gain of new truths and convictions, which give me in a de- 
gree command over my bodily condition ; the gain of insight and 
knowledge, whereby 1 can ward off attacks against which I, like 
others, before felt myself powerless, I have learnt to know the 
effects of stimulants, and am emancipated from their tyranny. 
As on the morning of our departure from Marienberg, we drove 
along the beautiful shores of the Rhine, I felt, that new and bene- 
ficent laws had been divulged to me, and that I was closer under 
the protection of Nature. 

At Bingen, after exploring the Niederwald on donkeys, and 
visiting the Rheinstein, — a turretted old castle perched among 
rocks and woods high above the river, fitted up and inhabited by 
a Prince of Prussia, — we quitted the Rhine to take the road to 
Wiesbaden, where, as at other fashionable watering-places. Idle- 
ness holds an annual festival ; for the proportion is small of those 
who are here solely for the business of cure. Thence a short 
railroad carried us to Frankfort, famous for its biennial fairs, 
where merchants thickly congregate ; for the election and coro- 
nation in past centuries of the Emperors of Germany ; and most 
famous of all as the birth-place of Goethe, who as boy, among the 
other sights and sounds that were teaching his young mind its 
powers, witnessed with greedy delight one of the imperial corona- 
tions, himself already appointed to a throne and a sway, firmer 
and wider than that of Emperors. Here were laid the founda- 



56 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

tions of a nature, the richest the earth has borne since Shak- 
speare. 

Sir Egerton Brydges, that genial old man, says : — " A large 
part of the existence of a human being consists in thought and 
sentiment." Most true. Like air through the lungs, thought 
and emotion are curling unceasingly round the brain ; they are 
the atmosphere of the soul, as impalpable, yet as real and vital, 
as that we breathe. Without this lively presence of feeling and 
thought, we cannot be as soul-endowed beings ; it is the state of 
mental life. Our friends, our neighbors, our children, are far 
off from us, in comparison with this sleepless inward offspring of 
the mind. Is it well-limbed, healthy, clean, we live the erect, 
loving, steadfast life of a genuine man ; is it deformed, crabbed ; 
our life is narrow, suspicious, timid. What a task, then, how 
high, how deep, to feed, to purify, to enlarge, to enrich this spring 
of every human movement, endeavor, purpose, deed. Such is 
the Poet's function, the noblest, the most useful. Through his 
sensibility to the beautiful, he sees furthest into the nature of 
things, goes down to the root of the matter, discerns in each class 
of being the original type, wherein Beauty has its perfect dwelling. 
Embodying the visions thus had, in moulds which each creates 
for itself, he brings before his fellow-men mirrors, wherein they 
behold themselves, their thoughts and feelings, subtilized, exalted 
— magic mirrors, whose images, glowing with almost supernatu- 
ral effulgence, are yet felt to be true. For poetry is a distillation 
of Beauty out of the feelings and doings of daily life, and a poem 
is but the finest, maturest fruit of impulses, which exist in, and 
openly or secretly control, the most prosaic worker in a trading 
community. Who so base or dull, but has had moments of spi- 
ritual abstraction, when his whole being was penetrated with un- 
earthly light, whereby all things, as it were transfigured, looked 
calm and joyful ? Breathes there a man, not blasted with idiocy 
in whom at times a gorgeous sunset would not awaken emotion^ 



GOETHE. 57 



whose heart would not open to the mystic beauty of the midnight 
sky, who has not felt, though but for an instant, a quickening 
impulse towards perfection ? Such moods the poet fosters, awa- 
kens, confirms. He teaches the mind to use its wings : he peoples 
it with richer possibilities. The Poet is the highest of educators. 
With the gushings of the young untainted heart, mingle his warm 
expansive thoughts, and as years ripen, we embrace more closely 
the truths he has melodiously unfolded, unconscious often whence 
they have come. 

The fortune of worldly position and of length of years, favored 
the pre-eminent genius of Goethe, in performing the great task 
of the poet in a way unparalleled in these latter times. No 
man of the age has so widened the intellectual horizon of his 
country, so deepened and freshened the common sea of thought, 
so enriched the minds of his contemporaries with images of beauty 
and power. Among the heartless, senseless complaints against 
Goethe, — as such will be made against the greatest, — that of his 
want of patriotism is the most vapid. Let the man be pointed to 
who has done so much to enlighten, to elevate Germany. He 
has thus contributed more towards the liberty of his country than 
any score of " Liberals," even though they be genuine ones. 
There is a fitness in his being born at Frankfort, at once the 
capital of Germany and a free town. Saving Luther, there is 
none other who better deserves the title of Father of his country. 

His fellow citizens are about to raise to him a colossal statue in 
Frankfort. In the neighboring town of Mayence, a noble one, 
designed by Thorwaldsen, has been lately erected to Gutemberg. 
Goethe and Gutemberg will be side by side. They belong 
together; the one, the German who invented types, the other, 
the German who has made the best use of them. 

A day sufficed for Frankfort. The most beautiful thing they 
have to show, is Dannecker's statue of Ariadne. For our route 
towards Switzerland we chose what is called the mountain road, 
4* 



58 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



which traverses one of the most fertile plains of Europe, bounded 
on the East by a range of hills, sloping up into soft valleys and 
wooded heights, with here and there a ruined castle to connect 
the fresh-looking landscape with the olden time. Our first night 
was at Weinheim, an ancient town begirt with towers, and snugly 
seated, amidst orchards and vineyards, at the foot of the hills. 
Early before breakfast, I walked up to the old castle of Windeck. 
I met people going out to work; they looked mostly hunger- 
pinched and toil-bent. To how many is the earth a cold prison, 
instead of the fair warm garden Nature offers it. To none, even 
the most favored, is life what it might be. When will men's 
aims be truer, and their means juster, and existence cease to be 
a harrying scramble ? The earth is yet shadowed by the scowl 
of man upon his fellow. Nature is most rich and bountiful, 
would we but live after her law. The resources are within and 
about us ; and a Christian must believe that they will be awakened 
and improved, till man at last smiles upon man. 

A night rain had sweetened the air and land for our morning 
drive to Heidelberg, which was the next stage. We spent an 
hour among the broad ruins of the famed castle, saw the streets 
lively with students, joyous intelligent looking youths, sought out 
two or three young Americans at their lodgings, and then went 
again rolling smoothly on our journey, to end the day at Carlsruhe 
(Charles' rest), the capital of the Grand Duchy of Baden. The 
next day we dined at Baden — Baden, the celebrated watering, 
place, lying beautifully in a stream-enlivened valley, between 
gentle hills, overrun for miles with shady walks and drives. 

The Cursaal, containing the spacious public saloons and ball- 
rooms, and furnished like a palace, is the general resort in the 
evening. Here are the gambling-tables, three or four of them, 
all plying at the same time their silent gloomy trade. Round 
each large oval table, with its wheel of destiny in the centre, and 
its fine green cloth covered with figures and mystic divisions, was 



GAMBLING-TABLES. 59 



a crowd of spectators and players, standing or seated. To par- 
take of the scene actively and from its midst, I joined one of them, 
throwing down occasionally among the twinkling gold pieces and 
fat piastres a pale florin, the lowest stake allowed. The players 
were of various conditions and ages and aspects ; a few of them 
mere players, to whom it was an arithmetical trial, a sportful 
excitement, like one young Englishman who gaily scattered a 
handful of Napoleons at a throw, choosing, as though he could 
choose, the numbers to stake on, dallying carelessly with Fortune. 
But out of the fixed serious countenances of most, stared the 
Demon of gain. He must have laughed one of his bitterest 
laughs at his dupes. The scene would have adorned Spenser's 
cave of Mammon. In the glare of a large overhanging light, a 
circle of human beings intent upon gold, and all the features of 
Avarice concentrated in haggard unity on one little spot. A 
circle, but without bond of union ; each pursuing his end in sel- 
fish isolation, unmindful of his neighbor, except when Envy 
stirred at his good fortune ; absorbed, possessed by the one feel- 
ing ; his whole nature quenched under its cold tyranny ; his 
visage half petrified by the banishment of all other thought. — It 
had too its poetic side ; the hope ever renewed ; the mysterious 
source of the decree, coming out of unfathomable depths ; its 
absoluteness, representing perfectly the inexorableness of Fate. 

Before entering on our route through the Black Forest to 
SchafFhausen in Switzerland, we made a circuit of half a day by 
Strasburg, to see the Cathedral, one of the most beautiful of 
Gothic churches, the pinnacle of whose spire is the highest point 
ever reached in an edifice of human hands, being twenty- 
four feet higher than the great Pyramid of Egypt. These airy 
Gothic structures, rising lightly from the earth, as if they were a 
growth out of it, look, amidst the common houses about them, like 
products of another race. They have an air of inspiration. 
Their moulds were thoughts made musical by deep feeling. 



60 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

They are the Poems of an age when Religion yearned for 
glorious embodiment. They declare the beauty and grandeur 
of the human mind, that it could conceive and give birth to a thing 
so majestic. Those high-springing vaults; those far-stretching 
aisles, solemnized by hues from deeply colored windows ; those 
magnificent vistas, under roof; those outward walls, so gigantic, and 
yet so light with flying buttresses and the relief of delicate tracery ; 
that feathery spire, which carries the eyes far away from the earth ; 
to think, that the whole wondrous fabric, so huge and graceful, so 
solid and airy, so complex and harmonious, as it stands there before 
you, stood first, in its large beautiful completeness, in the brain 
of its architect, Erwin von Sieinhach. Those great builders of 
the middle ages have not been duly known ; their names are not 
familiar, as they should be, like those of the great painters. 

Strasburg, and Alsace, of which it was formerly the capital, 
though long in the possession of France, are German still in lan- 
guage and customs. The original character of a people clings to 
it through all kinds of outward vicissitudes. This is strongly 
exemplified in the French themselves. The exact similarity 
between certain prominent features in the ancient Gauls and 
the modern French, shows with what fidelity mental qualities 
are transmitted through advancing stages of civilisation, and 
what permanent unfailing effects, soil, atmosphere and climate 
exert upon the character of a people. The Gauls were as noted 
for the fury of their first onset in their battles with Ceesar, as the 
French were at Agincourt and in the Spanish Peninsula, and 
seem to have been discomfited by the steadfastness of the Romans 
precisely in the way their descendants were by the cooler cou- 
rage of the British. Winkelman, endeavoring to show the effects 
of air and nourishment on national character, states, that accord- 
ing to the Emperor Julian there were in his day more dancers in 
Paris than citizens, and I have somewhere seen this quotation 
from Cato ; — -Duas res Gens Gallica industriosissime persequituTf 



ZURICH, GOLDAU. 61 



rem militarem et argute loqui : — Two things the Gallic people cul- 
tivate most diligently, military aflairs and glibness of speech. 

In a day and a half we reached SchafFhausen by Romberg and 
Donauschingen. At Schaffhausen we had to resign the comfort of 
post-horses. The inn-keepers of Switzerland, a numerous and 
wealthy class, have influence enough, it is said, to prevent the 
introduction of the posting-system, it being of course their interest 
to have travellers move slowly. On the way to Zurich, we stopped 
an hour a few miles below Schaffhausen, to see the Falls of the 
Rhine, the finest in Europe, and well deserving their fame. In 
the afternoon we had the first view of the snow-capt mountains. 
Far before us, fifty or sixty miles off, they lay along the horizon 
like a bank of silver. We approached Zurich, descending among 
gardens, and vineyards, and villas, with the lake and town in view. 
The evening hour of arrival is always a cheerful one to the 
traveller, and it is trebly so, when the smiling welcome of " mine 
host " is preceded by such a greeting as this from Nature. We 
had time before dark to enjoy the wide prospect from the top of 
the Hotel. The sublimities of Switzerland were still remote, but 
we were already encompassed by its beauties. 

The next morning we started early, intending to sleep that 
night on the top of the Righi. Crossing before breakfast Mount 
Aibis, from whose southern side the mountains about the Lake of 
the four Cantons came grandly into view, we descended upon 
Zug, passing through which and along the northern shore of its 
lake, we reached Arth at one ; whence, at half-past two, we com- 
menced the journey up the Righi on horseback with a guide. The 
ascent begins a mile east of Goldau, one of the villages destroyed 
by the fall of the Rossberg in 1806. Conceive of a slip of rock 
and earth two miles long, one-fifth of a mile wide, and one hun- 
dred feet thick, loosened from the summit of a mountain five 
thousand feet high, rushing down its side into the valley below. 
It overwhelmed three villages with five hundred of their inhabit- 



62 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE 

ants, and spread desolation over several miles of the valley. We 
passed through the terrific scene, a chaos of rock and rubbish, 
where Goldau had been. Huge blocks of stone, as large some of 
them as a small house, were forced up the Righi far above the 
site of Goldau. There are traditions of similar slides from this 
same mountain in past ages, and still higher up were scattered 
other blocks which the guide said had come on one of those oc- 
casions from the Rossberg, three or four miles distant. We were 
more than three hours ascending, and went up into a cloud, which 
enveloped the top of the mountain, so that we had no sunset. The 
cloud passed away in the night. 

The next morning before dawn, with cloaks about us, we were 
out. From the top of this isolated peak, a mile above the lakes 
at its base, we saw light break slowly over the earth, as yet with- 
out form in the darkness. We had almost a glimpse of the creative 
mystery. We were up in the heavens, and beheld the Spirit of 
God move upon the face of the earth. We witnessed with mag- 
nificent accompaniment the execution of the mandate, — Let there 
be Light. The peaks in the sun's path rose first out of darkness 
to meet the coming dawn, their jagged outline fringed with grey, 
then with gold. Day had hardly broke about us, when off to the 
south fifty miles a rosy tint shone on the snowy heads of the 
Bernese Alps, the first to answer the salutation of the Sun. Soon, 
the summits of all the mountains rose up in the growing day, a 
world of peaks, the giant offspring of the Earth awakened by the 
Morning. Below was still twilight. Gradually light came down 
the mountains and rolled away the veil of night from the plain. 
The Sun grew strong enough to send his rays into the valleys, 
and opened the whole sublime spectacle, — a spectacle affluent in 
sublimities, that lifted the Thoughts out of their habits, and swelled 
them to untried dimensions. The eye embraced an horizon of 
three hundred miles circuit; the Mind could not embrace the 
wealth of grandeur and beauty disclosed. Towards the west, 



THE RIGHI. 63 



the view ranged over what from such a height seemed an immense 
plain, bounded by the far dim Jura ; an indistinct landscape, with 
woods, and rivers, and lakes; or, rather, a hundred landscapes 
melted into one, that took in several of the largest, most fertile 
cantons, covering thousands of square miles. Turning round, we 
stood amazed before the stupendous piles of mountain. From 
five to fifty miles away, in a vast semicircle, rose in wondrous 
throng their wild bulks — rugged granite or glittering snow, tower- 
ing in silent grandeur, an upper kingdom, their heads in the sky. 
They looked alive as with a spectral life, brought from the 
mysterious womb of the Earth. You gaze, awed, baffled, in 
their majestic presence, overwhelmed by the very sublimity of 
size. 

We had come up by the north path, we went down by the south. 
What a walk on a sunny morning ! Down we went, nearer and 
nearer to the beautiful lake right under us, plunging deeper and 
deeper into the magical scenery of its shores. We reached Weggis 
in two hours and a half. The perpendicular height from the level 
of the lake to the pinnacle of the Righi is about a mile ; in the 
descent I must have walked seven or eight. By steamboat we 
reached Lucerne at one. From Lucerne we looked back down 
the lake at the throng of mountains that rose out of its waters and 
crowded the eastern horizon. A slight haze made the sun shine 
on them more warmly. The scene was like a vision, so strange 
was it and beautiful. 

The same afternoon we left Lucerne and slept at Entlebuch, 
whence the next day we came to Berne, traversing the broad 
cantons of Lucerne and Berne, through a country abundant in 
crops and landscapes. Our attempt to see some of the splendors 
of the Bernese Oberland was frustrated by the weather ; so that, 
after going from Thun to Brienz, through their two lakes, we 
turned back in the rain, having merely got a momentary glimpse 
at Interlaachen of the Yungfrau. We made a long day from 



64 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



Berne to Lausanne, passing through Freyburg, the stronghold of 
Romanism in Switzerland, remarkable for the singularity and 
picturesqueness of its position, high up in one of the bends of the 
river Saane ; for its suspension bridge — the longest in the world — 
one hundred and seventy feet above the river which it spans ; for 
its Convents and Jesuits' College, and for the dirtiness of its 
streets. A transparent morning for the drive from Lausanne 
along the shore of Lake Leman to Geneva, gave us a clear view 
of Mont Blanc, more than sixty miles off. We reached Geneva 
on the 17th of August. 

Calvin, Rousseau. An old town that hasn't its great men is 
tasteless to the traveller. These two give the flavor to Geneva. 
Of necessity far apart in time, for one would think the spirit of 
Calvin must have been well-nigh worn-out or dormant ere the little 
Republic could have engendered a Rousseau. I figure Calvin as 
gaunt, fleshless ; a man of a gritty substance, on whom flesh couldn't 
grow. A nature tough as steel, unbending as granite — as was 
needed for his task. With what a bold biting lash he scourged 
the sensualities of his time ! How he defied the principalities 
of the earth ! How he scorned the tempests of papal, and regal, 
and popular, wrath ! They did but invigorate his will, sublimate 
his genius, for the building up of a power that was to stretch over 
many nations and endure for ages. He would not have been Cal- 
vin had he not burned Servetus. This crime was the correlative 
of his virtue. It condensed with the heartiness and earnestness, 
the austerity and narrowness of Calvinism. His followers con- 
tinued and continue to burn Servetuses after a different fashion. 
Honor to the patriarch of the Puritans. 

Calvin, who was not born in Geneva, became there a ruler ; 
Rousseau, who was, doesn't seem to have been held of much ac- 
count by his townsmen, until lately, when they have erected to 
him a statue, more out of pride probably than love. Rousseau 
was made of anything but granite ; an unstable tremulous nature, 



VALLEY OF THE RHONE. 65 



devoured by passions which yet hadn't life enough to energize him. 
His life-lonir sorrows were of the Werterian kind, but he had'nt 
the strength to shoot himself. He was a Werter manque. Yet 
he too did a larc(e share of <»;ood. In a time of coldness and mis- 
belief, he helped to bring men to the knowledge of the truths and 
beauties of Nature, and of the resources of their hearts, through 
which knowledge alone can there be fruitful love of God. And 
this indeed, in different moods, is the office of all thinkers. Even 
Rousseau's sentimentality, insipid or sickening now, was savory 
and healing to his sophisticated generation. Had his writings 
had no other effect than to re-awaken in the hearts of so mamy 
mothers the duty of nursing tlieir own infants, he would deserve 
well of the Christian world. 

Florence, October, 1841. 

We remained at Geneva a fortnight, preparing for Italy. On 
the third of September we set out by the route of the Simplon, 
along the southern shore of the Lake and up the valley of the 
Rhone, sleeping the first night in Martigny, the second in Brigg, 
at the foot of the pass. The valley of the Rhone is generally 
level, barren, and subject to inundation. The long day's drive 
from Martigny to Brigg was of less interest than any we had had 
in Switzerland. The valley, almost unpeopled, without deep 
verdure or the softness of tillage, desolate witiiout being wild, 
offers no pictures to the eye ; and the mountains that enclose it, 
are bare and cold without elevation enough for grandeur. This 
is one of the worst regions for goitre and cretinism. Before noon 
we stopped to change horses in the public square of Sion, the 
capital of the canton of Valais. Happening to be a market day, 
there was a throng of people in the square. An assemblage of 
such unsightly human beings I never beheld. Nearly all looked 
as if they were more or less under the blight, whose extreme 
effect is the idiocy called cretinism. Mostly of a pallid Indian 
hue, with lank black hair, they had a strange weird look. 



SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



At Brigg, whilst we were getting ready to start in the morning, 
the master of the hotel, whose son or son-in-law had the furnish- 
ing of horses, came to inform me that I should have to take six 
for the ascent. I represented to him that for a carriage like mine 
four would be as sufficient as six, and that it would be unreason- 
able, unjust, and contrary to his own printed regulations to 
impose the additional two upon me. The man insisting, I objected, 
then remonstrated, then protested. All to no purpose. I then 
sought out the burgomaster of the town, to whom with suitable 
emphasis I represented the case. He could not deny that the 
letter of the law was on my side. Whether or not he had the 
power to over-rule the post-master I don't know, but at all events 
my appeal to him had no practical result ; the carriage came to 
the door with six horses. I had the poor satisfaction of letting 
the inn-keeper hear his conduct worded in strong terms, and of 
threatening him with public exposure in the guide-books as an 
extortioner, which threat acted most unpleasantly upon his feel- 
ings, and I hoped, kept him uncomfortable for some hours. 

What a contrast between the irritations and indignations of the 
morning, and the calm awed feelings of the day ! 'Twould be 
worth while for an army to be put into a towering passion at the 
base of the Simplon, just to have all anger quelled by the sub- 
duing sublimities of its sides and summit. As we went up the 
broad smooth road of Napoleon, the gigantic mountains opened 
wider and wider their grandeurs, heaving up their mighty 
shoulders out of the abysses, at first dark with firs, and later, as 
we neared the top of the pass, shining far, far above us in snow 
that the sun had been bleaching for thousands of years. We 
crossed the path of an avalanche, a hundred feet wide, that had 
come down in the spring, making as clean a swarth through the 
big trees as a mower's scythe does in a wheatfield. We passed 
under solid arches, built, or cut through the rock, to shield 
travellers against these opake whirlwinds, these congealed hurri- 



THE SIMPLON. 67 



canes, this bounding brood of the white giantess, begotten on her 
vast icy flanks by the near sun. On the summit of the pass, the 
snowy peaks still high above us, we came to the Hospice, and 
then descending quietly on the southern side a couple of miles, 
reached about sunset the village of Simplon. At the quiet inn 
we were greeted by two huge dogs of the St. Bernard breed, who, 
with waggings of tail and canine smiles, seemed doing the 
hospitalities of the mountain. Here we met two English travellers, 
and spent a cheerful evening as the close to such a day. After 
a sound sleep under thick blankets we set off early the next 
morning. What a starting point, and what a morning's drive ! 
Ere noon we were to be in Italy, and the way to it was through 
the gorges of the Simplon. 

With wheel locked, we went off at a brisk trot. The road on 
the Italian side is much more confined than on the northern. 
Yesterday, we had the broad splendors, the expanded grandeurs, 
of the scene ; to day its condensed intenser sublimities. We soon 
found ourselves in a tunnel cut through a rock ; then sweeping 
down deeper and deeper into what seemed an endless abyss ; 
close on one side of us a black wall of rock, overhanging hundreds, 
thousands, of feet, and darkening the narrow path ; as close on 
the other a foaming torrent, leaping down as it were a wild 
creature rushing by us to head our track. Over dark chasms, 
under beetling precipices, across the deafening rush of waters, 
the smooth road carried us without a suggestion of danger, the 
wonders of the sublime pass all exhibited as freely as to the 
winged eagle's gaze ; as though Nature rejoiced in being thus 
mastered by Art. On we went, downward, downward. At last 
the descent slackens, the stream that had bounded and leapt beside 
us, runs among the huge rocky fragments, the gorge expands to 
a valley, the fresh foliage of chestnut trees shadows the road, the 
valley widens, the mountain is behind us, a broad even landscape 
before us, the air is soft, the sun shines hotly on fields where 



68 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

swarthy men are at work, — we are in Italy ! It was a passage 
from sublimity to beauty. We were soon among vines and strong 
vegetation. This then is Italy. How rich and warm it looks ! 
We entered Duomo d'Ossola, the first town : it looked solid and 
time-beaten. In a public square hard by where we stopped for 
a few minutes, was a plentiful show of vegetables and fruit, juicy 
peaches and heavy bunches of grapes. At a rapid pace we went 
forward towards Lake Maggiore. These are the " twice-glorified 
fields of Italy." This is beautiful, passionate Italy, the land of so 
much genius, and so much vice, and so much glory. This is the 
land, for centuries the centre of the world, that in boyhood and in 
manhood is so mixed in our thoughts, with its double column of 
shining names familiar to Christendom. It was late in the after- 
noon when at Fariolo we came upon the beautiful Lake. For 
ten or twelve miles the road ran on a terrace, whose wall was 
washed by its waters. About sunset we passed the Borromean 
Islands, the evening clear and bland. 'Twas after nightfall 
when we entered Arona. 

We had to-day an incident, which gave assurance that we 
were arrived in Italy, as convincing as did the beauty and fruit- 
fulness lavished upon this chosen land. Opposite in character to 
them, that have their source in bounty and love ; this, in penury of 
spirit and hate. It came too from one of " God's Vicegerents on 
Earth," although its nature smacked of paternity in the Prince of 
Darkness. God floods his creation with liberty and light, the 
which his vicegerents. Kings and Popes, are ever busy to smother, 
lest men be maddened and blinded by the too free use of Heaven's 
best gifts. God's vicegerents ! his counterworkers rather. They 
are oftenest the very antidotes of light. Their God is Power, 
whom they worship with human sacrifices. Monarchies and 
Hierarchies are the tokens of man's weakness. The stronger 
they, the weaker he. As men strengthen, they dwindle. They 
are like props planted beside a young tree, that having insidiously 



VEXATIONS. 69 



taken root, divert into themselves nourishment due to it, so that 
the tree languishes and perishes, while they thrive and wax 
strong. They are the bridle put into the horse's mouth in the 
fable, for his help, as he foolishly thought, which became the 
instrument of his enslavement. They are the stewards of Custom, 
which is the tyranny of the lower human faculties over the higher. 
I once heard when a boy a stump-speaker at a " barbecue '* 
declare, that a visit to Europe had made him a democrat. The 
process whereby this effect was wrought will be clear to most 
Americans who sojourn here for a time. As counterpoise to this, 
it will be but fair to mention that German Prince, who, becoming 
tainted with republicanism, was sent to the United States to be 
cured thereof, — and was cured. That man deserved a throne. 
But to the incident. 

At the Piedmontese frontier, the custom-house officer, who as 
usual examined but one of our trunks, hit upon the one that con- 
tained books. " Ah ! Books," said he ; " I must make a list of 
them." Hereupon he ordered his assistant to take them all out, 
my representations that they were solely for my own use, and 
that I was merely passing through Piedmont, having no effect. 
On first alighting, I heard one say to the other, " II Signore 6 
militare ;" a conclusion which was probably dispelled by the 
sight of the contents of the trunk, and not, I think, to my advan- 
tage. The making of the list was a long process, the officer 
having to write the titles that were not Italian letter by letter. 
The task seemed to him a hard and unaccustomed one. The 
subordinate displayed the title of each volume beside his princi- 
pal, I superintending the orthography. The assistant handled 
the books carefully and even tenderly, as though in his eyes they 
were things precious. The poor man, I fancied, looked at me 
with an expression of deferential regard, as one who possessed 
and had free access to such a treasure. Among them M^as Sil- 
vio Pellico's story of his imprisonment, in Italian. He turned it in 



70 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

his hands, looked into it, gently shuffling over the leaves, and 
quietly glancing from the volume to me, not at all as if he would 
beg it, but as if he transferred towards me some of the feeling 
the book awakened in him. He probably had heard vaguely of 
Pellico's martyrdom. The list finished, the books were repacked, 
and the trunk was leaded, that is, tied round with stout twine, 
over whose knot was pressed, with long pincers, a small leaden 
seal. The trunk was replaced on the carriage, and a paper was 
given me certifying its contents and the operation it had under- 
gone. This overhauling and list-taking was but the commence- 
ment of the vexation. The next day, — to make an end of the 
story, — on passing out of Piedmont, an officer was sent with us to 
see the sealed trunk delivered unbroken at the custom-house of 
Lombardy, some distance off. It was just as if I had had a 
criminal in company, and Piedmont warned Austria of his dan- 
ger. Books, in truth, are criminals in both countries. On 
arriving at Milan I was obliged, before driving to the hotel, to go 
first to the custom-house, to leave in safe keeping the mysterious 
trunk, as big with mischief as the Grecian Horse to the Trojans, 
but luckily by the vigilance of Piedmont its diabolical purport 
was revealed to Austria. Quitting Milan I had to call for it, to 
leave it again at the Piedmontese custom-house on re-entering 
Piedmont on the road to Genoa ; for I found that otherwise, owing 
to a press of business there, I should be delayed two or three 
hours. It came after me the next day to Genoa, where, not to 
have any more frontier troubles, I left it, to be sent to Florence, 
which it reached several days later, bringing with it a bill against 
me, for separate travelling charges, of ten dollars. This affair, 
trifling as it appears, marred the enjoyment of our first days in 
Italy. It makes a man, too, feel little, to find himself utterly de- 
fenceless against such pitiful abuses from low officials. 

Through the bountiful plains of Lombardy, we had a short 
day's drive from Arona to Milan, passing near the first battle-field 



MILAN. 71 



between Scipio and Hannibal. Entering Milan by the arch of the 
Simplon, we came first upon the broad Parade, or Place d/Armes, 
where the cannon are kept always loaded, Milan being the capi- 
tal of the Austrian Lombardo- Venetian Provinces, and residence 
of the Imperial Viceroy. The two principal objects of Milan 
are, Leonardo da Vinci's great picture of the last supper, and the 
cathedral, a vast, beautiful, gothic structure of white marble, 
from whose roof ascends a forest of light pinnacles and marble 
needles, surmounted by statues. Around, upon and within the 
church are two or three thousand statues, numbers of them the 
effigies of benefactors. Conspicuous on a pinnacle was one of 
Napoleon. A gift of cash to the church will obtain for the donor 
the honor of a statue, its prominence and elevation being measured 
by the amount bestowed. What inventive genius these solemn 
gentlemen of the robe have always shown in unloosing the clasp 
of money-clutching man ! What a scent they have for the trail 
of gold ! A traveller relates, that passing through " the noble 
little state of Connecticut," and stopping to bait in one of its 
dreariest townships, he asked a tall raw-boned man, who was 
measuring him keenly with his eye, what the people did in so 
barren a country for a living : " When we can catch a stranger, 
we skin him, and when we cant, we skin one another." I defy 
the leanest native in the stoniest part of Connecticut, to devise the 
means more shrewdly for compassing a given dollar, than these 
ghostly bachelors. From the roof of the cathedral we looked down 
into the opulent city beneath, and far away over the rich plain 
of Lombardy. To the west, as distant as the pass of the Simplon, 
was visible the snowy head of Mount Rosa. 

We left Milan after forty-eight hours, and were a day and a 
half on the road to Genoa, sleeping the first night in a clean good 
inn at Novi. Some miles out of Milan, not far from Pavia, we 
stopped to see the famous Chartreuse, with its beautiful church 
and dozen little chapels, each one enriched with precious mar- 



72 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

bles exquisitely wrought and inlaid, whereon millions have been 
spent in work and materials. Madame de Stael said, that Genoa 
has the air of having been built by a Congress of Kings. We 
walked through its streets of palaces, searching the palaces them- 
selves for pictures, which is the chief and pleasantest occupation 
of the stranger passing through Italian cities. From the best 
points we had a survey of the town and harbor. The port is 
very active, and Genoa is growing in population, commerce and 
wealth. What a country this beautiful Italy would be, if it could 
drive out the foreigner, if it could shake off ecclesiastical domi- 
nation, if it could bind itself up into a single nation, if — but there 
are too many ifs. 

We were glad to find ourselves on the third day out of Genoa 
on the road along the shore of the Mediterranean. It takes some 
time to get accustomed to Italian cities and ways. One has too a 
feeling of loneliness, which custom never entirely overcomes, in 
a large crowded town, where you know not a soul, and have 
speech with none but hirelings ; so that, after having " seen all 
the sights," you are cheered by departure, and smile upon the 
Cerberus at the gate, who stops your carriage to learn from your 
passport that you have the right to go. Starting from Genoa in 
the afternoon, we slept the first night at Chiavari, the second at 
Massa. The Mediterranean on the right, valleys and hills on 
the left ; the road winding, mounting, descending with the move- 
ments of the shore, where land and sea are gently interlocked ; 
compact towns nestled in the green bosom of valleys, the moun- 
tains behind, the sea before them ; vines gracefully heavy with 
purple grapes, festooned from tree to tree ; — these are the chief 
features of the day-long picture. From Massa, seated by the 
water, with a shield of marble mountains against the north, we 
started early on the sunny morning of the 16th of September, 
wishing to reach Florence before dark. We soon lefl the sea, 
and crossing the mountain range, went down on the other side 



LUCCA. 73 



into the territory of Lucca, among hills clothed with chestnut and 
olive, and fields the gardens of Plenty, the sun shining warmly, 
the earth breathing fragrantly through its leafy abundance. 
Valery, in his excellent guide-book, recommended to me by 
Wordsworth (Murray's wasn't yet published) says of Lucca ; — 
" Un certain perfectionnement social et philosophique parait avoir 
prevalu pendant long temps dans ce petit etat, qui n 'eut jamais 
de Jesuites. L'Encyclopedie y fut re-imprimee en 28 vol. folio, 
1 758-7 L" Surely the Lucchese were wise to keep out the 
Jesuits ; for priestly venom, which so poisons in Italy the cup of 
life, festers nowhere to bitterer virulence than in that dehuman- 
ized corporation. But the letting in of such a flood of French 
philosophy, as is implied by a reprint of the renowned Encyclope- 
die, that was a questionable proceeding. Yet after all, Voltaire, 
Diderot and their associates sharpened and helped to disenthral 
the intellect of the Christian world ; they opened the eyes of men, 
though they could not tell them what it was best to look at. Va- 
lery, whose book is that of a man of letters, and is a mine of 
minute historical, biographical and miscellaneous information, lets 
go no opportunity of bringing France and Frenchmen before his 
readers. Always cheerful and polished, he is a thorough zealous 
Frenchman, who neither disturbs nor is himself disturbed by the 
stifFest nationalism of another. 

While changing horses in Lucca, we were tempted by voluble 
domestiques de place with enumeration of the sights of the town ; 
but our eyes and hearts were set upon Florence. The post- 
master questioned us eagerly, how many carriages were behind. 
Now is his autumnal harvest. The English, to whom all other 
travellers are so much indebted for the cleanliness and comfort 
of the inns on the Continent, are swarming southward. Soon 
after quitting Lucca we entered Tuscany, — proud Tuscany, in 
bygone times, the intellectual centre of Italy, the home of her 
language, the warm nest of genius, the cradle of her giants, of 
5 



74 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



Dante, of Michael Angelo, of Bocaccio, of Petrarca, of Leonardo 
da Vinci, of Machiavelli, of Galileo, By Pistora and Prato, we 
drove along the south-western base of the Appenines, and through 
fields closely tilled up to the trunks of the olive, the mulberry, 
and the vine, and among white villas glistening in the western 
sun, we approached the high walls of Florence. 

Nature and Art contend the one with the other in beautifying 
Florence. Except westward, where the Arno flows towards the 
sea, all about her are gentle hills that have come down from 
mountains, visible here and there in the distance. The Appenines 
and the Arno have scooped out a site, which man has made much 
of. The moment you pass out of almost any one of the gates, 
smooth gentle paths tempt you up heights, as if eager to exhibit 
some of the fairest landscapes even of Italy. In twenty or thirty 
minutes, you turn round to a view embracing the dome-crowned 
town, with its spacious leafy gardens, and far-stretching valley, 
and the countless heights and mountains which, bestudded with 
white villas, churches, convents, and clothed with the vine and 
olive, lie all round " the most beautiful daughter of Rome." 
Towards sunset, seen through that purple haze, which gives it a 
voluptuous, sleepy aspect, the landscape, so beautiful from its 
forms and combinations, looks almost like an illusion, a magical 
diorama. Carefully guarded within the walls, are many of the 
loveliest offspring of the Arts, ever fresh with the grace of genius ; 
without them. Nature unrolls her indestructible beauties, height- 
ened by Art and the associations of creative thought. Within 
the same hour, you may stand before the Venus of Cleomenes 
and on the tower of Galileo, which overlooks Florence and the 
vale of the Arno ; before the Madonna of Raphael, and on the 
"top of Fiesole." 

Even where the accumulations of Time are the most choice, 
the curiosities outnumber by much the beauties ; so that the 
sight-seer has some weary and almost profitless hours, and re 



FLORENCE. 75 



joices occasionally like Sterne, when the keys could not be found 
of a church he went to see. It is true, sight-showing has become 
so lucrative, that he seldom has that pleasant disappointment. 
Neither, on the other hand, does one like to miss anything, nor to 
do by halves what one has come so far to do. There are thino-s 
too that are not much in the seeing, but that it is well to carry 
away the memory of having seen. The rapid traveller through 
crowded Italy, must therefore work nimbly with body and mind, 
from morn till night, to accomplish his labor of love. As we 
have the winter before us in Florence, we proceed here in a more 
idle and gentlemanly way. We can lounge among the marvels 
of the Pitti and the Uffizii, and let the mood of the moment prompt 
us what to sit before, without self-reproach, postponing the rest 
till to-morrow, or next week, or next month ; or we can even let 
a whole day go over, without setting eyes on a picture or a statue 
or a church. Some of our first and pleasantest hours were spent 
in the studios and company of our own sculptors. It is much 
for a stranger, to have here fellow-countrymen of character and 
intelligence, who rank with the best as artists. 

The first fortnight after our arrival, the town was enlivened by 
the presence of a Scientific Congress, numbering nearly nine 
hundred members, mostly Italians, to whom the amiable Grand 
Duke did the honors of his capital in graceful and munificent 
style. Among his hospitalities, was a dinner given at the Poggio 
Imperiale, one of his villas a mile out of the Roman Gate. Nine 
hundred guests were received in the suite of elegant drawing- 
rooms on the first floor, and sat down in the second to tables sup- 
plied with as much taste as luxury. 'Twas a brilliant animated 
scene. After dinner, toasts were drank, and short sprightly 
speeches made amidst vivas and bravos. The guests were all 
carried to and from the villa in carriages furnished by the host. 
As we drove back in the evening, my three Italian chance-com- 
panions vied in commendation of the courtesy and liberality of 



76 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



the Grand Duke. At last, one oi'thenn, a tall, stout, comfortable 
shrewd-looking man of about fifty, a priest too, I think, informed 
us, that he had come against orders, for he lived in the dominions 
of the Pope (who, with the arch-priestly dread of light, prohibits 
his subjects from attending these Congresses), and that he was 
the only representative from the papal states. To this disclosure 
the other two said not a word, and I dare say, what in me rose 
as a suspicion, mounted in them to pretty nearly a brimming con- 
viction, namely, that our portly papal fellow-passenger was there 
for the purpose of taking notes quite other than scientific. 

The crowning scene to the proceedings of the Congress was 
its last meeting in full session, in the large hall of the old Palace. 
Seven or eight hundred Italians, educated men, numbers of them 
men of thought, a noble-looking assemblage of heads. The pur- 
pose of their meeting I overlooked in the bare fact of such a con- 
vocation in that hall, where in the olden times of popular so- 
vereignty were heard the stirring accents of free deliberation. 
May it be an omen of better days, when an assemblage as large 
and enlightened shall meet on the same spot for even higher ob- 
jects, and with the new vivifying feeling, that at last they have 
become once more thoroughly men ! 

Florence, May, 1842. 

One can lead here for a season an intellectual life without 
much mental effort, with enough of activity to keep it in a re- 
ceptive state ; and the mind will lay up stores of impressions, to 
ripen hereafter into thought. The Past opens to the stranger 
rich pastures, wherein if he can but feed with healthy instincts, 
he will assimilate into himself abundantly of the old. The crea- 
tive spirits of bygone periods invite him to communion ; all they 
ask of him, is sympathy with their labor. Even the Poets exact 
not for the enjoyment of them, that vigorous co-operation in the 
reader, which Wordsworth justly intimates is necessary from 



CLIM4 VA 77 



his. The best Italian poetry is mo^e superficial than the best 
English. It is based upon, noi ij'jo iropregnated throughout with 
thought. It has more of njiric and sentiment, of form and grace. 
Only Dante obliges you <o gather yourself up as for a fraternal 
wrestle. Alfieri at first '/Cmewhat, until you have found the key 
to his mind, which has not many wards. 

A scale of the occupjitions, pastimes, idleness, of a semi-pas- 
sive half year in FlorcTice, would have at its basis the walks and 
drives in the Cascine and environs. But first, a word about the 
climate. It is much like ours of the middle states, except that 
our winter is colder and drier. An American is surprised at this 
similarity on arriving in Italy, having got his notions from English 
writers, who, coming from their cloudy northern island, are en- 
chanted with the sunny temperance of an Italian winter, and op- 
pressed by the heats of summer. The heat is not greater than 
it is in Maryland, and our winter is finer, certainly than that of 
Florence, being drier, and though colder, at the same time sun- 
nier. As with us, the autumn, so gloomy in England, is cheer- 
ful, clear, and calm, holding on till Christmas. They have 
hardly more than two cold months. Already in March the spring 
is awake, and soon drives back Winter, first into the highest 
Appenines, where he clings for a brief space, and thence retreats 
up to the topmost Alps, not to reappear for nine or ten months. 
Nor is that beautiful child of the light and air, the Italian sunset, 
more beautiful than the American. 

Walking or driving ; — the opera, theatre, and company ; — the 
galleries of painting and sculpture, and the studios of artists ; — 
reading and study at home. Thus and in this gradation would I 
divide the hours of a man of leisure in Florence, especially if he 
be one whose nerves oblige him to lead a life of much more gen- 
tlemanly idleness, than with a perfectly eupeptic stomach he 
would choose. I put walking and driving first, as being, although 
the most innocent, the most absolute forms of idleness. The 



78 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Cascine, a public promenade, just out of the western gate of the 
town, stretching a couple of miles down the right bank of the 
Arno, cannot be surpassed in situation and resources by anything 
similar in Europe. In warm weather, you have close shade, and 
in cold, the sun all along the margin of the stream, with a hedge 
and groves of pine and ilex as a cover against the tramontana or 
north wind. Thither on Sundays and other holidays resort the 
people at large, and every day in fine weather, the free and the 
fashionable, including among the former, monks, white and 
brown, whom I see here almost daily in shoals, with a sigh at the 
waste of so much fine muscle. 

On the Continent, not a town of twenty thousand inhabitants, — 
nay, of fifteen or ten, but has its theatre, for operas or comedies 
at stated seasons. Music and the theatre are not, as with us, an 
occasional accidental amusement, but an habitual resource : they 
have an honorable place in the annual domestic budget, even of 
families of small means. Music is part of the mental food of the 
Italians. It is to them a substitute for the stronger aliment of 
freer countries. May it not be, that the bounds set to mental 
development in other spheres, are in part the cause of the fuller 
cultivation of this ? Nature always strives to compensate herself 
for losses and lesions. Life, if cramped on one side, will often 
swell proportionably in another. Music has been to Italy a solace 
and a vent in her long imprisonment. This is not, of course, an 
endeavor to account for the origin of musical genius in Italy : 
original aptitudes lie far deeper than human reason can ever 
sound : but, that the people has musical habits, is probably in a 
measure owing to such influences. I don't remember ever to 
have heard an Italian whistle. They are too musical, the empti- 
est of them, for that arid futility. They sing as they go for want 
of thought ; and late at night 'tis most cheerful to hear, moving 
through the street, laden with airs from operas, mellow voices 
that die sweetly away in the stillness, to be followed by others, 



MUSIC. 79 



sometimes several in chorus. To me there is always something 
soothing and hopeful in this spontaneous buoyant melody, the final 
sounds of the Italian's day. 

As nothing in Art is more marketable than musical talent, 
London and Paris take, and keep, to themselves the first adepts. 
To the gifted songsters of the South, — whose warmth seems essen- 
tial to the perfecting of the human musical organ, — showers of 
gold make amends for showers of orange-blossoms ; and the daz- 
zling illumination of palaces and sumptuous theatres, for the bril- 
liancy of their native sky. Italy scarcely hears, in the fulness 
of their powers, her Pastas, Malibrans, Grisis, Lablaches, Rubinis. 
Their gifts once discerned, they are wafted across the Alps, to 
share the caresses, the triumphs, the largesses of the great 
northern capitals. When their career is run, the most of them 
come back to their never- forgotten home. The dear, beautiful, 
sorrow-stricken mother, who gave them their cradles, — and who 
alone could give them, — gives them too a tomb. Florence there- 
fore has no richly equipt opera. In Italy itself, Naples and Milan 
have choice before her. 

The Opera is not a perfectly pure form of Art. It is a forced 
marriage between language and action on the one side, and music. 
The poetry of the language is smothered by the music, while on 
the other hand words often clog the wings of melody. Language 
and action are definite, music is vague. In their union, the 
indefiniteness of music is resisted, the distinctness of words is 
obliterated by a haze, albeit a golden haze. In the compromise, 
whereby the union is brought about, some violence is done to the 
nature of each. The effect of music is best when its source is 
invisible. This mode of presentation accords with its nature ; 
for music is a voice from the depths of the infinite, — a disembodied 
spirit, delivering its message through the least substantial medium 
of access, — sound. The glaring showiness, the pomp and cor- 
poreal effort of the stage, are an obstruction to its airy aspirations. 



80 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

While to the dramatic reality the music imparts a lightness and 
poetic transparence, by these coarse material- forms some of its 
own life is absorbed. Of all Art the genuine effect is, to exalt 
the tone of the mind, to refine its temper. Even the knowledge 
communicated is but incidental, altogether subsidiary to a fruit- 
fuller gain. Facts, history. Art uses merely as vehicles, to con- 
vey to the mind its offerings of beauty. The results of Art are 
not, like scientific acquirements, tangible, measureable ; they 
are chiefly in the mood awakened. The deepest, grandest truths, 
which it is the function of Art to reveal and illustrate, are pre. 
sented in an indirect way. A noble poem leaves the mind of the 
reader in an expanded state. He feels a higher, clearer con- 
sciousness of life, a broader hope, a refreshed content. Available 
facts have not been piled away in his memory ; but his best sus- 
ceptibilities have been stimulated ; his nature has been attuned 
on a higher key than common ; he has a quickened sensation of 
freedom, of nobility. He is lifted into a higher state of being, 
and in that state is apter for the performance of all practical 
duties. Herein consists the noble usefulness of poetry, of Art. 
This mental exaltation, this disenthralment of the spirit from all 
gross bonds, good music especially never fails to produce. Its 
opening voice is a grateful summons to the spiritual part of our 
nature. The glare, bustle and complex movements of the stage, 
make a confusion of effects. The spectacle, busying the senses, 
unstrings the rapt intentness of the spirit. The joyful calm 
and solemnity of the religious mood, always created by the best 
music, is ruffled. 

For a really good society, two things are requisite ; a high state 
of culture, and the habitual re-union of the most cultivated through 
genial and intellectual sympathies. But as social distinctions, in 
part factitious, prevail even in republican countries, this fusion 
into unity under high influences, is nowhere more than partially 
practicable. Gross and accidental advantages are still prized, — ■ 



SOCIETY. 81 



and that even by the intellectual, — above those that are inherent 
and refined. They who possess, watch them jealously. Instead 
of the salve, printed in large letters on Goethe's threshold, they 
would like to inscribe on theirs, " No admittance to strangers;" 
that is, to those who hav'n't the same interests to guard. Against 
a partition of their power, they in various ways protest ; and now 
with the more emphasis, from a perception of the growing disre- 
gard of them. The land of Promise, where men and things shall 
be valued at their just worth, is much too remote for its remote- 
ness to be measured ; and we can only discover that we are less 
far from it, by a comparison of where we are with where we have 
been, — a comparison which, if made broadly and with a free 
spirit, will, in other domains of life as well as in this, induce 
hopefulness and trust. 

The second requisite, therefore, is found, from general causes, 
as little in Florence as elsewhere, and less than in the great capi- 
tals. As to the first, Florence has its creditable circle of men 
of Letters, Science, and Art. But while with those to whom rank 
and affluence give opportunities of education, they a^e but slen- 
derly connected, they are at the same time sundered from the 
masses ; they and the multitude cannot duly co-operate ; their 
light scarcely pierces the blighting shade cast upon the people by 
the tangled brambles of priestly abuse. A community under 
Roman ecclesiastical dominion, cannot attain to the highest state 
of culture possible in its age. By the growth and diffusion of 
knowledge, through the long peace and the intercommunication 
among nations, the bonds of episcopal tyranny have been some- 
what loosened in the Italian states. The body of the scientific 
and literary men have of course always lived in secret protest 
against this curse. But though they hate the tyrants and con- 
temn their impostures, they cannot escape from them. The mind 
is stinted and thwarted in its wants and aspirations. Thought 
itself, free in the dungeon and on the rack, languishes where it 
5* 



82 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

has not free utterance by speech and pen. That under this long 
double load of political and religious despotism, the Italians have 
still kept alive the sacred fire of knowledge ; have, through the 
thickest atmosphere, shot up into the sky, high enough for all 
Europe to see them, lights, poetic and scientific, proves, what deep 
sources of life, what elasticity and tenacity of nature there are in 
this oppressed people. Let those who for their abject state would 
despise them, think of this, and they will perhaps wonder that the 
Italians are not even more prostrate. 

The political despotism to which Tuscany was subjected by the 
first Medici, has been, since the extinction of that bad breed, a 
paternal one, under a branch of the house of Austria. Still, 
though mild and forbearing in the hands of the present worthy 
Grand Duke, and his father, so justly beloved by the Tuscans, it 
is a despotism (and nothing else would be permitted by the other 
states of Italy), and as such, crushes in the people some of the 
richest elements of life. Florence, therefore, cannot be in advance 
of its sisters in social organization and spirit. Like other cities 
of its compass, it has nothing better than what, by a combination 
of the figures Amplification and Hyperbole, is termed " Good 
Society," composed here, as elsewhere, by those who have inherit- 
ed, or by wealth acquired, social rank ; embracing in Florence, 
besides the native noblesse and diplomatic corps, a large body of 
" nobility and gentry," — in the phrase of the English newspa- 
pers, — from other lands, who for a season take up their abode in 
the Tuscan capital. The occupation of this circle is idleness. 
Start not at the apparent solecism. It is but apparent ; for, to 
people who are not urged to exertion either by body or spirit ; 
whose infinite natures are in a measure circumscribed within the 
animal bounds of the ephemera of the fields, their whole life 
revolving in a quick diurnal orbit ; whose minds, left void by 
exemption, — not, however, entirely wilful, — from active duties 
and labors, are obliged, in order to oppose the pressure of time. 



THE GALLERIES. 83 



literally to make something out of nothing ; to people thus dislo- 
cated from the busy order of nature, it becomes an occupation, 
requiring method and forethought, to resist the weight of their 
waking hours, and maintain the daily fight with ennui. Their 
insipidity of life is seasoned by a piquant ingredient, supplied by 
clouds of little cupids, — imps that, with their inborn perverseness, 
choose here to hover over nuptial couches, assaulting the hymeneal 
citadel with such vigor, that all, says dame Gossip, have not 
strength to withstand them. Their chief public performances 
are, to support the opera, and adorn the Cascine with their 
equipages and toilettes. 

The Galleries of Painting and Sculpture come next in the scale, 
on which I have subdivided the hours of a stranger^s Florentine 
sojourn. They might, without inaccuracy, take their place under 
the head of company. Genuine works of Art speak to you more 
clearly than most tongue- wagging speakers. In them is a soul 
which puts itself at once in connexion with yours. When at 
Antwerp, I never walked on the ramparts without feeling what 
companionship there was in the spire of the Cathedral : the mind 
felt its presence constantly and cordially. A shot-tower, you 
will say, of equal height, that met the eyes whenever they were 
turned towards the town, would have been just as much company. 
With this difference : that the one would be the company of a 
ponderous bore, the other, that of a buoyant poet. 

Whenever your mood is that way bent, you betake yourself to 
the Grand Duke's residence, the Pitti Palace. Passing through 
its wide portal, you ascend, under the guidance of civil guards, 
by broad flights of steps, to a suite of spacious apartments, where 
are lodged Raphael, and Titian, and Claude, and Rubens, and 
Leonardo da Vinci, and Guido. From room to room, through a 
long series, you converse with these great spirits for hours together 
if you choose. Every day in the year, except Sundays and holi 
days, these refulgent rooms are thus courteously thrown open. 



84 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



The servant at the door, who takes charge of your cane or 
umbrella, is not permitted even to accept anything for the service. 
A noble hospitality is this, to which strangers are so accustomed that 
they do not always duly value it. The Gallery attached to the 
old Palace over the Uffizii, where is the Tribune with its priceless 
treasures, daily invites the stranger in the same liberal way. 

Among the studios of living Artists, the most attractive natu- 
rally to an American, are those of his fellow countrymen. Nor 
do they need national partiality to make them attractive. The 
first American who gained a reputation in the severest of the 
Fine Arts was Greenough. For some years he was the only 
sculptor we had, and worthily did he lead the van in a field 
where triumphs awaited us. 1 happened, five or six years ago, to 
travel from Boston southward with him and Powers, and heard 
Greenough then warmly second Powers' inclination, and urge 
him to hasten to Italy. Powers was soon followed by Clevinger, 
who, in turn, received from him encouraging words. The three 
are now working here harmoniously together. 

Artists of merit have seldom much to show at their rooms ; for 
their works are either made to order, and sent to their destina- 
tions as fast as finished, or they are sold almost as soon as seen. 
Sculptors have an advantage over painters, inasmuch as they 
retain the plaster casts after which each work is chiselled in marble. 
As Greenough does not always finish the clay model up to the 
full design in his mind, but leaves the final touches to the chisel 
itself, he is not forward to exhibit his casts taken from the clay, 
the prototypes of the forms that have been distributed to different 
quarters of the world. He has just now in his studio, recently 
finished in marble for a Hungarian nobleman, an exquisite figure 
of a child, seated on a bank gazing at a butterfly, that has just 
lighted on the back of its upraised hand. In the conception there 
is that union of simplicity and significance, so requisite to make 
a work of plastic Art, especially of sculpture, efiective, and 



GREENOUGH. 85 



which denotes the genial Artist. The attitude of the figure 
has the pliable grace of unconscious childhood ; the limbs are 
nicely wrought ; and the intelligence, curiosity, delight, implied 
and expressed in its gaze at the beautiful little winged wonder 
before it, impart vividly to the work the moral element ; wanting 
the which, a production, otherwise commendable, is not lifted 
up to one of the high platforms of Art. Tlie mind of the specta- 
tor is drawn into that of the beautiful child, whose inmost facul- 
ties are visibly budding in the effort to take in the phenomenon 
before it. The perfect bodily stillness of the little flexible figure, 
under the control of its mental intentness, is denoted by the 
coming forth of a lizard from the side of the bank. This is one 
of those delicate touches whereby the artist knows how to beautify 
and heighten the chief effect. 

Another work of high character, which Greenough is just 
about to finish in marble, is a head of Lucifer, of colossal size. 
The countenance has the beauty of an archangel, with the hard, 
uncertain look of an archangel fallen. Here is a noble mould 
not filled up with the expression commensurate to it. There is 
no exaggei'ation to impress the beholder at once with the malevo- 
lence of the original which the sculptor had in his imagination. 
The sinister nature lies concealed, as it were, in the features, 
and comes out gradually, after they have been some time contem- 
plated. The beauty of the countenance is not yet blasted by the 
deformity of the mind, 

Greenough's Washington had left Jtaly before my arrival in 
Florence. By those best qualified to judge, it was here esteemed 
a fine work. Let me say a few words about the nudity of this 
■statue, for which it has been much censured in America. 

Washington exemplifies the might of principle. He was a 
great man without ambition, and the absence of ambition was a 
chief source of his greatness. The grandeur of his character is 
infinitely amplified by its abstract quality ; that is, by its clean- 



86 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

ness from all personality. Patriotism, resting on integrity of soul 
and broad massive intellect, is in him uniquely embodied. The 
purity and elevation of his nature were the basis of his success. 
Had his rare military and civil genius been united to the selfish- 
ness of a Cromwell, they would have lost much of their effective- 
ness upon a generation warring for the rights of man. Not these, 
but the unexampled union of these with uprightness, with stain- 
less disinterestedness, made him Washington. If the Artist 
clothes him with the toga of civil authority, he represents the 
great statesman ; if with uniform and spurs, the great General. 
Representing him in either of these characters, he gives prefer- 
ence to the one over the other, and his image of Washington is 
incomplete, for he was both. But he was more than either or 
both ; he was a truly great man, in whom statesmanship and 
generalship were subordinate to supreme nobleness of mind and 
moral power. The majesty of his nature, the immortality of his 
name, as of one combining the morally sublime with commanding 
practical genius, demand the purest form of artistic representa- 
tion, — the nude. To invest the colossal marble image of so tow- 
ering, so everlasting a man, with the insignia of temporary office, 
is to fail in presenting a complete image of him. Washington, 
to be best seen, ought to be beheld, not as he came from the hand 
of the tailor, but as he came from the hand of God. Thus, the 
image of him will be at once real and ideal. 

That Greenough's fellow-countrymen, by whose order this 
statue was made, would have preferred it draped, ought to be of 
no weight, even if such a wish had accompanied the order. To 
the true Artist, the laws of Art are supreme against all wishes 
or commands. He is the servant of Art only. If, bending to 
the uninformed will of his employers, he executes commissions in 
a way that is counter to the requirements of Art, he sinks from 
the Artist into the artisan. Nor can he, by stooping to unculti- 
vated tastes, popularize Art ; he deadens it, and so makes it 



GREENOUGH 87 



ineffective. But by presenting it to the general gaze in its severe 
simplicity, and thus, through grandeur and beauty of form, lifting 
the beholder up into the ideal region of Art, — by this means he 
can popularize it. He gradually awakens and creates a love 
for it, and thus he gains a wide substantial support to Art in the 
sympathy for it engendered, the which is the only true further- 
ance from without that the Artist can receive. 

A statue which is a genuine work of Art, cannot be appreci- 
ated, — nay, cannot be seen, without thought. The imagination 
must be active in the beholder, must work with the perception. 
Otherwise, what he looks at, is to him only a superficial piece 
of handicraft. The form before him should breed in him con- 
jecture of its inward nature and capacity, and by its beauty or 
stamp of intellect and soul, lead him up into the domain of human 
possibilities. The majestic head and figure of Washington will 
reveal and confirm the greatness of his character, for the body 
is the physiognomy of the mind. That broad mould of limbs, 
that stern calmness, that dignity of brow, will carry the mind 
beyond the scenes of the revolution, and swell the heart with 
thoughts and hopes of the nobleness and destiny of man. Let 
the beholder contemplate this great statue calmly and thoughtfully; 
let him, by dint of contemplation, raise himself up to the point 
of view of the artist, and it will have on him something of this 
high effect. He will forget that Washington ever wore a coat, 
and will turn away from this noble colossal form in a mood that 
will be wholesome to his mental state. 

This attempt to justify Greenough's work by no means implies 
a condemnation of other conceptions for a statue of Washington. 
A colossal figure, — but partially draped, — seated, the posture of 
repose and authority, — Greenough's conception, seems to me the 
most elevated and appropriate. Artists have still scope for a 
figure, entirely draped in military or civil costume, on horse- 



SCENES AND THOUCxHTS IN EUROPE. 



back or standing. Only, this representation of Washington will 
not be so high and complete as the other. 

Powers left America with a goodly cargo of busts in plaister, 
carrying them to Italy, there to execute them in marble. With 
these he opened his studio in Florence. The first that were 
finished he sent to the public exhibition. All eyes were at once 
drawn to them. Here was something totally new. Here was 
a completeness of imitation, a fidelity to nature never before ap- 
proached, never aimed at by modern sculptors. Even the most 
delicate blood-vessels, the finest wrinkles, were traceable in the 
clear marble. Nor did the effect of the whole seem to be there- 
by marred. People knew not whether their astonishment ought 
to pass into admiration or censure. The Italian sculptors gath- 
ered themselves up. This man's Art and theirs were irreconcile- 
able. They felt, — we must crush him, or he will overmaster 
us. They crowded the next exhibition with their best busts. 
Powers too was there. In the Tuscan capital, a young American 
sculptor not merely contended publicly with a host of artists for 
superiority ; he defied to mortal combat the Italian school in this 
department of Art as taught by Canova. It was a conflict not 
for victory solely, but for life. Where would be the triumph, 
was not long doubtful. Powers' busts grew more and more upon 
the public eye. The longer they were looked at, the stronger 
they grew. By the light they shed upon the art of sculpture, 
the deficiencies of their rivals became for the first time fully 
apparent. Connoisseurs discovered, that they had hitherto been 
content with what was flat and lifeless. 

The principle of the academic style of bust-making, thus sud- 
denly supplanted, was, to merge the minor details into the larger 
traits, and to attempt to elevate, — to idealize was the phrase, — 
the subject, by preserving only the general form and outline. 
The result was, that busts were mostly faithless and insipid, their 
insipidity being generally in proportion to their unfaithfulness. 



POWERS. 89 



Powers made evident, that the finest traits contribute to the indi- 
viduality of character ; that the slightest divergence from the 
particularities of form vitiates the expression; that the only good 
basis of a bust is the closest adherence to the material form, as 
well in detail as in gross. So much for the groundwork. Hand 
in hand with this physical fidelity, must go the vital fidelity ; 
that is, a power to seize life as it plays on that beautiful marvel, 
the human countenance. From the depth of the soul comes 
the expression on the countenance ; only from the depth of a soul 
flooded with sensibility, can come the power to reproduce this 
tremulous mystical surface. Nay, this susceptibility is needed 
for the achievement of the physical fidelity itself. Without it, 
the lines harden and stiffen under the most acute and precise per- 
ception. Finally, to this union of accuracy in copying the very 
mould and shape of the features, with sympathy for the various 
life that animates them, must be added the sense of the Beauti- 
ful. This is the decisive gift, that turns the other rich faculties 
into endowments for Art. 

The Beautiful underlies the roughest as well as the fairest 
products of Nature. It is the seed of creation. In all living 
things this seed bears fruit. In the embryo of each there is a 
potentiality, so to speak, to be beautiful, not entirely fulfilled in 
the most perfect developments, not entirely defaced in the most 
deformed. This spirit of beauty, resplendent at times to the 
dullest senses, lambent or latent in all living forms, pervading 
creation, this spirit is the vitality of the Artist. In it he has his 
being. His inward life is a perpetual yearning for the Beauti- 
ful ; his outward, an endeavor to grasp and embody its forms ; 
his happiness is, to minister in its service ; his ecstasy, the 
glimpses he is vouchsafed of its divine splendors. 

As sympathy with the motions of life is needed, to copy physi- 
cal forms, so this loving intimacy with the Beautiful is needed, 
to refine and to guide this sympathy. In short, a lively sense of 



90 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

the Beautiful is requisite, not merely to produce out of the mind 
an ideal head, — an act so seldom really performed, — but likewise, 
to reproduce a living head. He who would copy a countenance 
must know it. To know a human face, — what a multiplex pro- 
found knowledge ! Not enough is it, to have a shrewd discrimi- 
nating eye for forms; not enough, to peer beneath the surface 
through the shifting expression. To get knowledge of any in- 
dividual thing, we must start with a general standard. You 
cannot judge of a man's height, unless you bring with you a 
generic idea of measures and a notion of manly stature. So of 
a man's mind, — though the process be so much deeper, — and so 
too of his head and face. A preconceived idea of the human 
countenance in its fullest capability of form and expression, an 
aboriginal standard must illuminate the vision that aims to take 
in a complete image of any face. What mind can compass this 
deep-lying idea, except one made piercing, transparent, " vision- 
ary," by an intense inborn love of beauty ? Each face is, so to 
speak, an offshoot from a type ; each is a partial incarnation of 
an ideal, all ideals springing of course out of the domain of 
Beauty. It is only by being able to go back to this ideal, which 
stands again closely linked with the one, final, primeval, perfect 
idea of the human countenance ; it is only by thus mastering, I 
may say, the original possibility of each face, that you can fully 
discern its characteristics, its essential difference from other 
faces — learn why it is as it is and not otherwise. A vivid, elec- 
tric sensibility to the Beautiful, in active co-operation with the 
other powers, is the penetrating, magnifying telescope wherewith 
alone the vision is carried into the primitive fields of being. 
Thus is every face, even the most mis-shapen, brought within 
the circle of the Beautiful ; cannot be fully seen, cannot be 
thoroughly known, until it is brought within that circle. Under 
the homeliest, commonest countenance, there is an inner lamp 
of unrevealed beauty, casting up at times into the features 



POWERS. 91 



gleams of its light. These translucent monnents, — its truest and 
best states, — the Artist must seize, in order to effect a full like- 
ness. This is the genuine idealisation. And these states he 
cannot even perceive without the subtle expansive sense of the 
Beautiful. 

The unexampled excellence of Powers's busts was soon ac- 
knowledged. In this department of Art, the Italian sculptors 
yielded to him the first place. Thorwaldsen, on coming, 
astonished, out of Powers's studio, declared that he could not 
make such busts, that there were none superior to them, ancient 
or modern. The cry now rose, that Powers could make busts, 
he could copy nature, but nothing more. This false inference 
sprang not wholly from jealousy, but in part from the false school 
of Art long dominant in Italy, where students were taught to 
study the antique more than Nature ; whereby the perceptions 
and mental powers became so weakened and sophisticated, that it 
was no longer felt, what a task, how high and intense it is, truly 
and vitally to copy Nature. Conceive what is a human counte- 
nance, — the most wonderful work of God that our eyes can come 
close to ! What an harmonious blending of diverse forms, what 
a compact constellation of beaming features, what concentrated 
life, what power, what variety, what unfathomable significance, 
in that jewelled crown of the body, that transparent earthly tem- 
ple of the soul ! Adequately to represent this masterpiece of 
divine workmanship, what a deed ! He who can reproduce it in 
its full life and truth and character, must be a great Artist ; that 
is, a re-maker, in a degree, of God's works, — a poet, a creator. 
To copy Nature, forsooth ; the words are very simple : the act is 
one of deep insight, of noble labor, anything but a superficial work. 
He who performs it well, co- works with Nature, his mind exalted 
the while by poetic fervor. Hence none but Artists of the first 
class have left good portraits. 

The faculty for the Ideal is then indispensable to the execution 



92 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

of a good bust. It is the key-stone which binds the other endow- 
ments into the beautiful arch, whereby works of human hands 
grow stronger with time. The basis in plastic Art is always, 
unerring accuracy in rendering physical forms. Sense of beauty 
and correctness of drawing, are thus the two extremes of the 
Artist's means. Between them, — and needed to link them in 
effective union, — is fullness of sensibility, to sympathize with and 
seize the expression of, all the passions and emotions of the soul. 
These, with imitative talent and manual dexterity, embrace the 
powers needed as well in the portrait- artist as in him whose sub- 
jects are inventions. I speak of the plastic Artist without distin- 
guishing the sculptor from the painter. The difference between 
them is in the inequality of their endowment with the faculties of 
form and color ; the sculptor requiring a severer eye for form 
than the painter, and dispensing with an eye for color. The mo- 
ment the Artist begins, by the working of his imagination, to 
compose a subject, then comes into active play the Reason ; the 
faculty whereby, in every department of work, prosaic as well as 
poetic, the mind selects and adapts, — the faculty whereby the 
means within reach are picked and arranged for the completest 
attainment of the end in view. This, it seems to me, is the only 
power needed in larger measure for the artist who composes 
groups, than for him who would make the best portrait. 

It is the completeness of his endowment with all the requisites 
for sculpture, that stamps Powers with greatness. In the circle 
of his genial gifts there is no chasm. They are compactly knit 
together. To his ends they all co-operate smoothly, through that 
marvellous instrument, the human hand. Such is the precision 
of his eye, that he who exacts of himself the most faithful con- 
formity to Nature's measurements, never needs the help of com- 
passes to attain it. Such his sense of the Beautiful, that he does 
justice to the most beautiful countenance, and has given a new 
grace even to draperies. Such his sympathy with life, that with 



POWERS 93 



equal ease he seizes the expressions of all kinds of physiognomies, 
so that you cannot say that he does men better than women, old 
better than young ; and hereby, in conjunction with his mimetic 
talent, he imparts such an elastic look to his marble flesh, that the 
spiritual essence, wherewith all Nature's living forms are vivified, 
may be imagined to stream from his finger-ends while he works. 
Such his manual dexterity, that in twenty hours he can turn out 
one of these great busts in its unparalleled completeness. And 
as if nothing should be wanting which could serve in his calling, 
Nature has bestowed on him a talent, I may call it a genius, for 
Mechanics, which, — had it not been overborne by superior facul- 
ties, destined to lift him up into the highest field of human labor, 
— would have gained for him a name and living as an inventive 
and practical machinist. It is now the pliant servant of nobler 
qualities ; helping him to modelling tools, to facilities and secu- 
rities for the elevation or removal of clay models, and to other 
contrivances in the economy of his studio. 

Powers had not been long established in Florence, ere he set 
about his first statue, the Eve. This work was planned before he 
came to Italy. Almost precisely as it stands now embodied in 
attitude and character, he described to me in America the image 
he had there evolved in his mind. The figure is above the ave- 
rage height, undraped and nearly erect. The only support it has 
from without is a broken stem by the side of the left leg, repre- 
senting the tree whence the fruit has just been plucked. On this 
leg is thrown the weight, the other being slightly bent at the knee. 
The head, inclined to the right, follows the eyes, which are fixed 
upon the apple, held in the right hand, raised to the level of the 
breast. The left arm hangs by the side, the left hand holding a 
twig of the tree with two apples and leaves attached. The hair, 
parted in the middle and thrown behind the ears, falls in a com- 
pact mass on the back. Round the outer edge of the circular 
plot of grass and flowers, which is the sole basis of the statue, 



94 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

coils the serpent, who rears his head within a few inches of the 
right leg, looking up towards the face of Eve. 

Here, without a fold of drapery to weaken or conceal any of 
Nature's lineaments, is the mature figure of a woman ; nearly 
erect, the posture most favorable to beauty and perfectness of 
proportion ; the body unconsciously arrested in this upright atti- 
tude by the mind's intentness ; while the deed over which she 
broods, without disturbing the complete bodily repose, gives occu- 
pation to each hand and arm, throwing thereby more life as well 
into them as into the whole figure. Thus intent and tranquil, 
she stands within the coil of the serpent, whose smooth but fiery 
folds and crest depict animal fierceness, and contrast deeply with 
the female humanity above him. Both for moral and physical 
effect the best moment is chosen, the awful pause between obedi- 
ence and disobedience. Her fresh feet pressing the flowers of 
Eden, Eve, still in her innocent nakedness, is fascinated against 
her purer will, — the mother and type of mankind, within whose 
bosom is ever waging the conflict between good and evil. What 
fullness combined with what simplicity in this conception, which 
bespeaks the richest resources of imagination under guidance 
of the severest purity of taste. 

How shall I describe the execution ? Knowledge and skill far 
exceeding mine, would fall short of transmitting through words 
an image of this marvel of beauty. The most that the pen can 
do before a master-piece of the pencil or chisel, is, to give a vivid 
impression of the effect it makes on the beholder, and a faint one 
of the master-piece itself 

In executing his Eve, Powers has had twenty or thirty models. 
From one he took an ankle, from another a shoulder, a fragment 
from the flank of a third ; and so on throughout, extracting his 
own preconceived image piece by piece out of Nature. From 
such a labor even a good Artist would recoil, baffled, disheartened. 
To none but a supreme genius does Nature accord such familiari- 



POWERS. 95 



ty. With instantaneous discernment his eyes detect where she 
comes short, and where her subtle spirit of beauty has wrought 
itself out. He seizes each scrap of perfection, rejects all the 
rest, and so, out of a score of models, re-compounds one of Na- 
ture's own originals. Such is the movement on the surface, that 
the statue has the look of having be^ wrought from within out- 
ward. With such truth is rendered the flexible expression im- 
parted to flesh and blood by the vital workings, that the great 
internal processes might be inferred from such an exterior. The 
organs of animal life are at play within that elastic trunk ; there 
is smooth pulsation beneath that healthy rotundity of limb. The 
capacity and wonderful nature of the human form fill the mind 
as you gaze at this union of force, lightness, and buoyant grace. 
In spite of that smooth feminine roundness of mould, such visible 
power and springiness are in the frame and limbs, that, though 
now so still, the figure makes you think of Eve as bounding over 
shrub and rivulet, a dazzling picture of joyous beauty. Then, 
again, as the eye passes up to the countenance, with its dim ex- 
pression of mingled thought and emotion, the current of feeling 
changes, and the human mind, with its wondrous endowments, 
absorbs for awhile the beholder. But mark ; it is by the power 
of Beauty that he is wrought upon. Through this, humanity 
stands ennobled before him. By this, the human form and capa- 
bility are dilated. This awakens delight, breeds suggestion. By 
means of this, the effect of the statue is full, various ; its signifi- 
cance infinite. Take away its beauty, and all is a blank. The 
statue ceases to be. 

The head of Eve is a new head. As it is beautiful, it is Gre- 
cian ; but it recalls no Greek model. Nor Venus, nor Juno, nor 
Niobe, can claim that she helped to nurse it. Not back to any 
known form does it carry the mind ; it summons it to compass a 
new one. It is a fresh emanation from the deep bosom of Art. 
In form and expression, in feature and contour, in the blending of 



SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



beauties into a radiant unity, it is a new Ideal, as pure as it is 
inexhaustible. Lightly it springs into its place from the bosom 
and shoulders. These flow into the trunk and arms, and these 
again into the lower limbs, with such graceful strength, that the 
wholeness of the work is the idea that establishes itself among 
the first upon the mind of the beholder. To the hollow of a foot, 
to the nail of a finger, every part is finished with the most labo- 
rious minuteness. Yet, nowhere hardness. From her scattered 
stores of beauty Nature supplied the details ; with an infallible 
eye, the Artist culled them, and transferred them with a hand 
whose firm precision was ever guided by grace. The Natural 
and the Ideal here blend into one act, their essences interfused for 
the unfolding of a full blossom of beauty. 

What terms are left to speak of the Venus of the Tribune ? 
None stronger are needed than such as are used in speaking of 
the Eve of Powers. Let who will cry presumption at him who 
places them side by side. Art always in the end vindicates her 
favorite children. The Eve need fear comparison with none of 
them. 

The clay model of Eve being finished, Powers's mind is busy 
with another work, also a single female figure, which he will set 
about immediately. It will represent a modern Greek captive, 
exposed in the slave-market of Constantinople. Like Eve, the 
figure will be without drapery ; like her, it will not fail to be a 
model of female beauty, though in frame, size, age, character 
and expression, altogether different. 

Clevinger has been here but a short time, and is zealously at 
work upon the crowd of busts which he brought with him from 
America, and several that he has modelled in Florence. Among 
the former is a fine one of Allston ; among the latter, one of 
Louis Bonaparte, ex-king of Holland, so admirably executed, that 
it awakens regret that there is none of equal fidelity extant of the 
Emperor Napoleon. 



BROWN AND KELLOGG. 97 

Two American painters are established here, who give promise 
of reaching a high excellence ; Brown and Kellogg. Brown 
devotes himself chiefly to landscapes, for which he displays rare 
aptitude. He has just finished a view of Florence, admirable in 
all respects, but chiefly for the truth with which it gives the rich 
hue of the Italian evening sky. An evidence of his gifts for this 
department, is the style in which he copies Claude Lorraine, repro- 
ducing the character, tone, and magical coloring of that great 
Artist with a fidelity that might impose upon a practised connois- 
seur. 

Kellogg, by the progress he has made since he came to Flo- 
rence, has shown that his ability is equal to his zeal. With an 
empty purse, and a spirit devoted to Art, he landed in Italy 
eighteen months since. In that period his genius, through indus- 
try and judicious study, has developed itself in a way that gives 
assurance that he will reach a high rank. 

I will conclude this Florentine chapter with a few chips of 
"fragments" picked up in that division, which the despotism of 
nerves over the intellectual as well as the physical man, obliged 
me to put last in my scale of occupations and pastimes. 

Among my disappointments are Petrarca and Macchiavelli. I 
am disappointed in Petrarca that his sonnets are written more out 
of the head than the heart. They sparkle with poetic fancy, but 
do not throb with sensibility. In his pleasant little autobiographical 
memoir, Petrarca ascribes to his love for Laura all that he was 
and did. For twenty years, it was the breath of mental life to 
him. Happily he was not of an energetic, glowing nature (his 
portrait might be taken for that of a woman), or his love would 
have consumed instead of animating him, or, worse still, would 
have had perhaps a quick close in success. I am sorry to con- 
clude, that he was very far from being the most miserable man 
of his generation. 

Macchiavelli is not the searching thinker that one unacquainted 
6 



SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



with his works might infer him to be, from his so long sustained 
reputation. He is a vigorous, accomplished writer ; a clear, 
nervous narrator. Subtlety in the discussion of points of political 
expediency, seems to me his highest power. Princes, nobles, and 
populace, are to him the ultimate elements of humanity. The 
deep relations of man to man, and of man to God, do not come 
vividly within his view. He has no thorough insight into the 
moral resources of man ; he does not transpierce the surface of 
human selfishness. There is in him no ray of divine illumina- 
tion, whereby he might discern the absolute. But it is unjust to 
reproach him with a want which he has in common with most of 
his brother historians. 

A just reproach against him is, that in his History he flattered 
the Medici, and has handed down a misrepresentation of them. 
From his pages no one would learn that the first Medici were 
usurpers, successful demagogues. Sismondi and Alfieri counter- 
act the false report of Macchiavelli, and disclose the long-con- 
cealed ugliness of these vulgar tyrants. Describing the state of 
Italy at the death of Lorenzo, and the loss of independence with that 
of liberty, Sismondi says : — " Florence, mastered for three gene- 
rations by the family of Medici, depraved by their licentiousness, 
made venal by their wealth, had learnt from them to fear and to 
obey." The hollowness and worthlessness of Pope Leo X., his 
prodigality, dissoluteness, and incapacity, are exposed by Sismon- 
di, who describes as follows Pope Clement VII., another Medici, 
and the one to vt^hom Macchiavelli, in a fulsome address, dedicated 
his History of Florence : — ^' Under the pontificate of Leo X., his 
cousin, when times were prosperous, he acquired the reputation 
of ability ; but when he came to confront distress not brought 
about by himself, then his unskilfulness in matters of finance -and 
government, his sordid avarice, his pusillanimity and imprudence^ 
his sudden resolutions and prolonged indecision, rendered him now 
less odious than ridiculous." Sismondi relates, that Lorenzo de 



THE MEDICI. 99 

Medici, being on his death-bed, sent for Savonarola, the celebrated 
preacher of ecclesiastical reform and devotee to liberty, who had 
hitherto refused to see Lorenzo, or to show him any respect. 
Nevertheless, Lorenzo, moved by the fame of Savonarola's elo- 
quence and sanctity, desired to receive absolution from him. Sa- 
vonarola did not refuse to him consolations and exhortations, but 
declared, that absolve him from his sins he could not, unless he 
gave proof of penitence by repairing as much as in him lay his 
errors. That he must pardon his enemies, make restitution of his 
ill-gotten wealth, and restore to his country its liberty. Lorenzo, 
not consenting, was denied absolution, and died, says Sismondi, in 
the possession of despotic power, " mori in possesso della tiran- 
nide." 

Lorenzo dei Medici, — whose portrait in the gallery here is that 
of an intellectual sensualist, whose largesses, pecuniary liberali- 
ties and sensual sumptuosities won for him the equivocal title of 
" il magnifico," — Lorenzo and Leo X. have the fame of being 
the munificent patrons of Poets and Artists. All the fame they 
deserve on this score is, that they had taste to appreciate the men 
of merit who lived in their day. These men were the last off- 
spring of the antecedent energetic times of liberty. By the re- 
ceding waves of freedom they had been left upon the barren shore 
of despotism. What had Leo X. to do with the forming of the emi- 
nent writers and artists who adorned the age to which the servil- 
ity of men has given his name 1 Patrons of Poets and Artists ! A 
curse upon patronage. Let it be bestowed upon upholsterers and 
barbers. Poets and Artists don't want patronage : what they do 
want is sympathy. Patronage is narrow, is blind ; its eyes are 
egotistical ; it is prone to uphold mere talent, mediocrity. Sym- 
pathy is expansive, keen-sighted, and discerns and confirms 
genius. 

Leonardo da Vinci, Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, men too great 
to be patronised, were the children of republican Florence, By 



100 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



Democracy, turbulent Democracy, were they nursed into heroic 
stature. When the basis of her government was the sovereignty 
of the people, when nobles had to put away their nobility to be 
admitted to a share in the administration of affairs, then it was 
that the bosom of Florence was fertile and wide enough to give 
birth to the men who are the chief glory of modern Italy. Com- 
pare Florence as she then was, vigorous, manly, erect, produc- 
tive, with her abject, effeminate, barren state under the Medici. 
Or contrast the genius generated by democratic Florence with 
that of aristocratic Venice. 

Alfieri tells, that he betook himself to writing, because in his 
miserable age and land he had no scope for action ; and that he 
remained single because he would not be a breeder of slaves. 
He utters the despair, to passionate tears, which he felt, when 
young and deeply moved by the traits of greatness related by 
Plutarch, to find himself in times and in a, country where no 
great thing could be either said or acted. The feelings here im- 
plied are the breath of his dramas. In them, a clear nervous 
understanding gives rapid utterance to wrath, pride, and impetu- 
ous passion. Though great within his sphere, his nature was not 
ample and complex enough for the highest tragedy. In his com- 
position there was too much of passion and too little ot high emo- 
tion. Fully to feel and perceive the awful and pathetic in human 
conjunctions, a deep fund of sentiment is needed. A condensed 
tale of passion is not of itself a Tragedy. To dark feelings, re- 
solves, deeds, emotion must give breadth, and depth, and relief. 
Passion furnishes crimes, but cannot furnish the kind and degree 
of horror which should accompany their commission. To give 
Tragedy the grand compass and sublime significance whereof it is 
susceptible, it is not enough, that through the storm is visible the 
majestic figure of Justice : the blackest clouds must be fringed 
with the light of Hope and Pity ; while through them Religion 
gives vistas into the Infinite, Be auty keeping watch to repel what 



ALFIERI. 101 



is partial or deformed. In Alfieri, these great gifts are not com- 
mensurate with his power of intellect and passion. Hence, like 
the French classic dramatists, he is obliged to bind his personages 
into too narrow a circle. They have not enough of moral liberty. 
They are not swayed merely, they are tyrannized over by the 
passions. Hence, they want elasticity and color. They are like 
hard engravings. 

Alfieri does not cut deep into character : he gives a clean out- 
line, but broad flat surfaces without finish of parts. It is this 
throbbing movement in details, which imparts buoyancy and 
expression. Wanting it, Alfieri is mostly hard. The effect 
of the whole is imposing, but does not invite or bear close 
inspection. Hence, though he is clear and rapid, and tells a 
story vividly, his tragedies are not life-like. In Alfieri there 
is vigorous rhetoric, sustained vivacity, fervent passion ; but 
no depth of sentiment, no play of a fleet rejoicing imagination, 
nothing " visionary," and none of the " golden cadence of poe- 
try." But his heart was full of nobleness. He was a proud, 
lofty man, severe, but truth-loving and scornful of littleness. He 
delighted to depict characters that are manly and energetic. He 
makes them wrathful against tyranny, hardy, urgent for freedom, 
reclaiming with burning words the lost rights of man, protesting 
fiercely against oppression. There is in Alfieri a stern virility 
that contrasts strongly with Italian efleminateness. An indignant 
frown sits ever on his brow, as if rebuking the passivity of his 
countrymen. His verse is swollen with wrath. It has the clan- 
gor of a trumpet that would shame the soft piping of flutes. 

Above Alfieri, far above him and all other Italian greatness, 
solitary in the earliness of his rise, ere the modern mind had 
worked itself open, and still as solitary amidst the after splendors 
of Italy's fruitfulness, is Dante. Take away any other great 
Poet or Artist, and in the broad shining rampart wherewith genius 
has beautified and fortified Italy, there would be a mournful 



102 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

chasm. Take away Dante, and you level the Citadel itself, under 
whose shelter the whole compact cincture has grown into strength 
and beauty. 

Three hundred years before Shakspeare, in 1265, was Dante 
born. His social position secured to him the best schooling. He 
was taught and eagerly learnt all the crude knowledge of his 
day. Through the precocious susceptibility of the poetic tempe- 
rament, he was in love at the age of nine years. This love, as 
will be with such natures, was wrought into his heart, expanding 
his young being with beautiful visions and hopes, and making 
tuneful the poetry within him. It endured with his life, and spi- 
ritualized his latest inspirations. Soberly he afterwards married 
another, and was the father of a numerous family. In the stir- 
ring days of Guelfs and Ghibellines, he became a public leader, 
made a campaign, was for a while one of the chief magistrates of 
Florence, her ambassador abroad more than once, and at the age 
of thirty-six closed his public career in the common Florentine 
way at that period, namely, by exile. Refusing to be recalled on 
condition of unmanly concessions, he never again saw his home. 
For twenty years he was an impoverished, wandering exile, and 
in his fifty-sixth year breathed his last at Ravenna. 

But Dante's life is his poem. Therein is the spirit of the mighty 
man incarnated. The life after earthly death is his theme. What 
a mould for the thoughts and sympathies of a poet, and what a 
poet, to fill all the chambers of such a mould ! Man's whole na- 
ture claims interpretation ; his powers, wants, vices, aspirations, 
basenesses, grandeurs. The imagination of semi-Christian Italy 
had strained itself to bring before the sensuous mind of the South 
an image of the future home of the soul. The supermundane 
thoughts, fears, hopes of his time, Dante condensed into one vast 
picture — a picture cut as upon adamant with diamond- To en- 
rich Hell, and Purgatory, and Paradise, he coined his own soul. 
His very body became transfigured, purged of its flesh, by the 



DANTE 103 



intensity of fiery: thought. Gaunt, pale, stern, rapt, his " vi- 
sionary" eyes glaring under his deep furrowed brow, as he walked 
the streets of Verona, he heard people whisper, " That is he who 
has been down into Hell." Down into the depths of his fervent 
nature he had been, and kept himself lean by brooding over his 
passions, emotions, hopes, and transmuting the essence of them 
into everlasting: song. 

Conceive the statuesque grand imagination of Michael Angelo 
united to the vivid homely particularity of Defoe, making pic- 
tures out of materials drawn from a heart whose rapturous sym- 
pathies ranged with Orphean power through the whole gamut of 
human feeling, from the blackest hate up to the brightest love, 
and you will understand what is meant by the term Dantesque. 
In the epitaph for himself, written by Dante and inscribed on his 
tomb at Ravenna, he says : — " I have sung, while traversing 
them, the abode of God, Phlegethon and the foul pits." Traversing 
must be taken literally. Dante almost believed that he had tra- 
versed them, and so does his reader too, such is the control the 
Poet gains over the reader through his burning intensity and gra- 
phic picturesqueness. Like the mark of the fierce jagged light- 
ning upon the black night-cloud are some of his touches, as 
awful, as fearfully distinct, but not as momentary. 

In the face of the contrary judgment of such critics as Shelley 
and Carlyle, I concur in the common opinion, which gives pre- 
ference to the Inferno over the Purgatorio and Paradiso. Dante's 
rich nature included the highest and lowest in humanity. With 
the pure, the calm, the tender, the ethereal, his sympathy was as 
lively as with the turbulent, the passionate, the gross. But the 
hot contentions of the time, and especially their effect upon him- 
self, — through them an outcast and proud mendicant, — forced the 
latter upon his heart as its unavoidable familiars. All about and 
within him were plots, ambitions, wraths, chagrins, jealousies, 
miseries. The times and his own distresses darkened his mood 



104 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

to the lurid hue of Hell. Moreover, the happiness of* Heaven, 
the rewards of the spirit, its empyreal joys, can be but faintly 
pictured by visual corporeal images, the only ones the earthly 
poet possesses. The thwarted imagination loses itself in a vague, 
dazzling, golden mist. On the contrary, the trials and agonies 
of the spirit in Purgatory and Hell, are by such images suitably, 
forcibly, definitely set forth. The sufferings of the wicked while 
in the flesh are thereby typified. And this suggests to me, that 
one bent, as many are, upon detecting Allegory in Dante, might 
regard the whole poem as one grand Allegory, wherein, under 
the guise of a picture of the future world, the poet has represented 
the effect of the feelings in this ; the pangs, for example, of the 
murderer and glutton in Hell, being but a portraiture, poetically 
colored, of the actual torments on earth of those who commit 
murder and gluttony. Finally, in this there is evidence, — and 
is it not conclusive ? — of the superiority of the Book of Hell, that 
in that Book occur the two most celebrated passages in the poeno, 
— passages, in which with unsurpassed felicity of diction and 
versification, the pathetic and terrible are rounded by the spirit 
of Poetry into pictures, where simplicity, expression, beauty, com- 
bine to produce effects unrivalled in this kind in the pages of Lite- 
rature. I refer of course to the stories of Francesca and Ugolino. 
Dante's work is untranslateable. Not merely because the 
style, form, and rhythm of every great Poem, being the incarna- 
tion of inspired thought, you cannot but lacerate the thought in 
disembodying it ; but because, moreover, much of the elements 
of its body, the words namely in which the spirit made itself 
visible, have passed away. To get a faithful English transcript 
of the great Florentine, we should need a diction of the fourteenth 
century, moulded by a more fiery and potent genius than Chaucer. 
Not the thoughts solely, as in every true poem, are so often virgin 
thoughts ; the words, too, many of them, are virgin words. Their 
freshness and unworn vigor are there alone in Dante's Italian. 



DANTE. 105 



Of the modern intellectual movement, Dante was the majestic 
Herald. In his poem, are the mysterious shadows, the glow, the 
fragrance, the young life-promising splendors of the dawn. The 
broad day has its strength and its blessings ; but it can give only 
a faint image of the glories of its birth. 

The bitter woes of Dante, hard and bitter to the shortening of 
his life, cannot but give a pang to the reader whom his genius has 
exalted and delighted. He was a life-long sufferer. Early dis- 
appointed in love ; not blest, it would seem, in his marriage ; 
foiled as a statesman ; misjudged and relentlessly proscribed by 
the Florentines, upon whom from the pits of Hell his wrath wreaked 
itself in a damning line, calling them, " Gente avara, invida, e 
superba;" a homeless wanderer ; a dependant at courts where, 
though honored, he could not be valued ; obliged to consort there 
with buffoons and parasites, he whose great heart was full of 
honor, and nobleness, and tenderness ; and at last, all his political 
plans and hopes baffled, closing his mournful days far, far away 
from home and kin, wasted, sorrow-stricken, broken-hearted. 
Most sharp, most cruel were his woes. Yet to them perhaps we 
owe his poem. Had he not been discomfited and exiled, who 
can say that the mood or the leisure would have been found for 
such poetry ? His vicissitudes and woes were the soil to feed and 
ripen his conceptions. They steeped him in dark experiences, 
intensified his passions, enriching the imagination that was tasked 
to people Hell and Purgatory ; while from his own pains he turned 
with keener joy and lightened pen to the beatitudes of Heaven. 
But for his sorrows, in his soul would not have been kindled so 
fierce a fire. Out of the seething gloom of his sublime heart shot 
forth forked lightnings which still glow, a perennial illumination, 
— to the eyes of men, a beauty, a marvel, a terror. Poor indeed 
he was in purse ; but what wealth had he not in his bosom ! True, 
he was a father parted from his children, a proud warm man, 
eating the bread of cold strangers ; but had he not his genius and 
6* 



106 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



its bounding offspring for company, and would not a day of such 
heavenly labor as his outweigh a month, aye, a year of crushed 
pride 1 What though by the world he was misused, received 
from it little, his own even wrested from him ; was he not the 
giver, the conscious giver, to the world of riches fineless ? Not 
six men, since men were, have been blest with such a power of 
giving. 

Pisa, February, 1843. 

Here is a wide chasm of time. A goodly space of ground, too, 
has been gone over. Without much stretchingj a volume might 
be put in between this date and the last. That trouble, however, 
shall be spared the writer and the reader. Let us see whether in 
a few pages we cannot whisk ourselves through Switzerland into 
Germany, and back to Italy. 

Starting northward from Florence, in the afternoon of June 7th, 
1842, in less than an hour we were among the Appenines, over 
whose barren, billowy surface we rolled on a good road to within 
a few miles of Bologna, where we arrived the next day at three. 

The Italian intellect is quick at expedients. With freedom the 
Italians would be eminently practical. Free people are always 
practical ; hence, the superiority of the English and Americans 
in the useful and commodious. From necessity and self defence, 
the acute Italians are adepts in the art of deception. Hypocrisy 
they are taught by their masters, temporal and spiritual ; a sub- 
stitution of the semblance for the substance being the foundation 
of civil and religious rule in Italy. 

The fictions of the Catholic Church are mostly unsuitable to 
the Arts. Martyrs and emaciated anchorites cannot be subjected 
to the laws of beauty. The Greek divinities were incarnations 
of powers, qualities, truths, which, though not the deepest, were 
shaped by beauty. The Romish saints, with their miracles and 
macerations, want capability of beauty together with dignity and 



LEONARDO DA VINCI 107 

respectability, and are thence doubly unfit for the handling of 
Art. The highest genius cannot make them thoroughly effective. 
In the gallery of Bologna one is often repelled even from the best 
execution by the offensiveness of the subject. The geniality of 
Art is shown as much in the selection of subjects as in the treat- 
ment. One tires of heavy virgins that would be thought to float, 
and old men on their knees to them, trying to look extades; and 
more still, of the distortions of mental and bodily agony. 

Leaving Bologna at noon, by Modena and Reggio, we arrived 
at Parma after dusk, through a country, level, fertile and well 
tilkd. Along the road vines hung in graceful festoons from tree 
to tree, and peasants were gathering mulberry leaves for silk- 
worms. 

After running to the Gallery, just to have a momentary look 
at the two famous Correggios, we started from Parma at nine in 
the morning, and coming on rapidly through Piacenza and Lodi, 
entered Milan just before dark. 

By the grandeur of the Cathedral we were even more moved 
than when we first beheld it. Then we explored its populous 
roof; now we descended into its vaults, peopled too with statues 
and busts, some of silver to the value of more than a million of 
francs. About the tomb of St. Charles Borromeo there is gold 
and silver to the amount of four million francs. Guard it well, 
Priests. 'Twill be a treasure on that day, which will come, 
when this people's deep, smothered cry shall end at last in a tri- 
umphant shout. From the Cathedral we betook ourselves to the 
barn-like place, which contains Leonardo da Vinci's fresco of the 
Last Supper. Here is the inspiration of genius. To produce 
that head of Jesus, what a conception must have been long nursed 
in the great painter's brain, and with what intense force of will 
must he have embodied it, to stamp upon human features such 
pre-eminence, such benignity, such majesty ! With this, the 
vigor and variety in the superb heads of the apostles, the grace 



108 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



and spirit of the grouping, bring the scene before you with such 
speaking presence, that one sees how pictures can strengthen and 
keep alive religious belief. By its vivid reality, its beauty and 
character, this sublime picture proclaims the truth of what it 
sets forth, and takes the mind captive with its power and its 
fascination. 

As we approached Como, we enjoyed much the contact again 
with mountains. After an early breakfast, June 12th, we were 
on board the steamboat at seven, to explore the beautiful lake. 
At nine, about midway, we landed, in order to see and have the 
views from the Villas Serbelloni, Melzi, and Somariva. 

The villa Somariva has some fine sculpture by Thorwaldsen 
and Canova, and a number of Italian and French pictures. The 
French Ideal is a medium of the human form taken from mea- 
surement of the antique. The genuine Ideal is attainable only 
through an earnest loving study of nature, directed by a sure eye 
and a warm sense of the beautiful. Modern French art has an 
eccentric look ; whereas. Art should always be concentric, seek- 
ing, that is, the centre of all forms and expressions, the concen- 
tration into an individual of the best qualities of many. Hence, 
high Art looks always tranquil and modest. French Art is apt 
to have an excited, conceited air. 

Stopping as we did where the Lake branches, we had followed 
the advice of a Milanese gentleman, who accosted us in the boat. 
Had we gone on, we should not have made by a good deal so 
much of our morning ; for the upper end of the lake has less 
interest and beauty than the middle. On re-embarking, as the 
boat returned, between one and two, we renewed conversation 
with the friendly giver of such good counsel. He had spent his 
Sunday in a passive enjoyment of the rich soft beauties of the 
Lake. This was the easy and highest form of worship for a 
nature like his. He was a man past forty, of rather more <han 
middle stature, with a well made; somev^hat stout frame, inclined 



AN EPICUREAN. 109 



to fullness. His complexion was of that rich creamy tint, seen 
oftener in Italy than elsewhere, with blue-black hair and smooth 
whiskers; a handsome man, with regular, bold features, that 
didn't look bold, from the gentleness of his expression ; for his 
graceful mouth and large white teeth were formed for smiling, 
and his black eyes were not those glowing Italian orbs, in whose 
depths so much of good or evil lies sleeping, — you know not 
which, — they were shallow, handsome, happy eyes. He ordered 
coffee, and pressed me to take a cup. After this, he offered me 
a cigar from his case, and upon my declining that too, he seemed 
to conclude that I lived a very poor life. For himself, he let not 
an hour in the day go by, he said, without regaling his body with 
some or other fragrant stimulant. He urged us, should we revisit 
Milan, to stop at the hotel where he lodged, whose cuisine and 
wines he praised with thankful animation. Yet, he was not one 
of those who spend their mornings in expectation of their dinner. 
He was too subtle an epicurean for such a dead diurnal vacuity. 
Though his dinner was the chief circumstance of his being, still, 
after his mode, he valued time, and knew how to bridge over the 
wide gulfs between meals upon pillars constructed of minor enjoy- 
ments, including among them easy acts of kindness and courtesy. 

We got back to Como at four, and started immediately for 
Lugano, our resting-place that night. The Lake of Lugano 
pleased us even more than that of Como. There is greater 
variety in the forms of the mountains. These fairy Lakes, uniting 
Italy to Switzerland, combine the beauties of both. 

As you advance from Lugano, the mountains close in upon you, 
the scenery growing bolder and grander. Through an opening not 
far from Lugano, we had a clear distant view down into Lake 
Maggiore, and then we came upon the picturesque old town of 
Belinzona, flanked with turrets, the turrets flanked with moun- 
tains. Towards evening we approached the southern sublimity 
of this pass, a rent in the mountain nearly a mile long, where the 



110 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

river Ticino, — which till now had this deep gorge all to himself,— 
has been forced by the engineer to make room for a road, the 
angry, headlong torrent being thrice crossed and recrossed in ihe 
course of the mile. As we emerged from this magnificent pas- 
sage, the mountains stretched up into Swiss stature, their sides 
clothed with firs as with a plumage. 'Twas dark when we drove- 
into Airolo, at the foot of the St. Gothard, where good beds 
awaited us. 

First through green fields and firs, then rugged wastes, and 
finally, torrents, snow, and bare rock, up, up, up we went for three 
or four hours, the steep road making its way zigzag on terraces. 
The summit of the pass, a scene of cold dreary sterility, is a great 
geographical centre ; for within a circuit of ten miles are the 
sources of four of the chief rivers of Europe, the Rhine, the 
Rhone, the Reuss, and the Ticino. 

Now we set off in a race with the Reuss, who bounds five 
thousand feet down the mountain in a series of cataracts, to rush 
into the Lake of the Four Cantons at Fluellen. We crossed the 
Devil's Bridge, the northern sublimity of the St. Gothard pass ; 
and the Pfaffensprung, so called from the tradition of a monk hav- 
ing leapt from rock to rock, across the torrent, with a maiden in 
his arms. That's a fine tradition. One cannot but have a 
kind of respect for the bold amorous monk. He deserved the 
maiden — better than any other monk. The beautiful maiden, — 
for beautiful she could not but be, to inspire a feat so daring, — 
must have been still and passive in the arms of her monastic 
Hercules ; for had she made herself heavy by scratching and 
kicking, whilst in mid air over that fearful chasm, I fancy the 
tradition would have been more tragical. Never was maiden 
more honorably won^ — by a monk. We passed through Altdorf, 
Tell's Altdorf, and taking the steamboat at Fluellen, traversed 
under a serene sky the Lake of the Four Cantons, with its sublime 
scenery, landing in Lucerne after sun-down. Thus, from dawn to 



SWISS SCENERY. Ill 



twilight we had crossed one of the grand Alpine passes, and the 
whole length of the most magnificent Lake in Europe. This was 
a rich day. 

The next morning, before starting for Thun, we took time to 
walk a few steps beyond one of the gates to see the colossal lion, 
•cut in the side of a rock, as designed by Thorwaldsen, in com- 
memoration of the faithful Swiss, who fell defending the royal 
family of France in the Tuileries in 1792. By the Emmendale 
we reached Thun the following day. Here, in this beautiful 
portal to the sublime scenery of the Bernese Alps, we sat our- 
selves down in quiet lodgings, by the water's edge, near where 
the river issues from the lake. 

In the grandeurs, sublimities, movements of Nature in Switzer- 
land, the creative energy reveals itself in doings and voices that 
astound the imagination. Nature seems here more than else- 
where vivified by the breath of God. Those gigantic piles of 
riven rock, fixed in sublime ruggedness, proclaim with unwonted 
emphasis, the awful hand that arrested their upheaving. Those 
terrific fields of eternal ice, the nourishing mothers of great 
rivers, tempt the imagination towards the mysterious source of 
Nature's processes. The common forms and elements of our 
globe are here exaggerated. Hills and valleys become moun- 
tains and gorges ; winter dwells on the peaks throughout sum- 
mer ; streams are obliged to be torrents. Walking in a meadow, 
you come suddenly on a streamlet, that looks in the grass like a 
transparent serpent at full speed, it runs with such startling velo- 
city, as though it had a momentous mysterious mission. The 
Rivers rush out of the Lakes, as if they had twice the work to do 
of other rivers. 

At the end of a month, we quitted Thun, about the middle of 
July, to return, for the rest of the summer, to the water-cure 
establishment at Boppart. 'Twould have been wiser had we 
gone to Graefienberg. Priesnitz understands his own discovery 



112 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



better than any one else, and inspires his own patients with a 
deeper confidence. At Graeffenberg, moreover, there is moun- 
tain air and the coldest water. Through the secluded Miinster 
valley we reached Basle, whence by railroad, post, and steamboat 
we rapidly descended the Rhine to Boppart. The Rhine suffers 
at first by being seen when one's vision has just been enlarged and 
sublimated by Switzerland. 

The left, the wooded, shore of the Rhine was golden with au- 
tumnal foliage, the right pale with fading vineyards, when in ihe 
middle of October we again turned our faces southward. 'Twas 
eleven o'clock, a chilly moonlight night, when, at the gate of 
Frankfort, the officer questioned us, " Are you the Duke ? " — 
" No, I am an American." — " Oh, then," to the postillion, " drive 
on." 

Our former admiration of Dannecker's statue of Ariadne was 
somewhat qualified, for since we first saw it, our eyes had been 
strengthened in Italy. The composition is admirable, the attitude 
graceful ; but the limbs want rounding and expressive finish, and 
the head is stiff, as mimicry of the antique always is. 

It being too late to re-enter Italy by the Splugen pass. We bent 
our course more eastward towards Munich and the Tyrol, through 
the fine old German towns of Wiirzburg and Augsburg. We 
might have been present at the festival held to celebrate the com- 
pletion of the Walhalla, a magnificent temple on the shore of the 
Danube, erected by the King of Bavaria, in honor of German 
worth and genius, to be adorned with the statues and busts of 
Germany's great men, from Arminius to Schiller. When I learnt 
afterwards that from this temple Luther is to be excluded, I was 
glad that we had not gone out of our way to see it. Figure to 
yourself the Apollo of the Vatican with the head purposely taken 
off, or the Cathedral of Strasburg with the spire demolished, and 
you will have some notion of the grossness of this outrage. A 
German Pantheon without Luther! Tho grandest national temple 



MUNICH; THE TYROL. 113 

that Architecture could devise, and sculpture adorn with the effi- 
gies of German greatness, yet left bare of that of Luther, could 
never be but a fragment. The impertinence of this petty, tran- 
sitory King, to try to put an affront on the mighty, undying Sove- 
reign, Luther ! 

In Munich there is a noble collection of pictures ; but the city, 
with its fresh new palaces, and churches, and theatres, has a made 
up look. It seems the work of Dilettantism : it is not a warm 
growth out of the wants and aspirations of the time. It is as if 
it had been said : Architecture and Painting are fine things ; 
therefore we will have them. The King of Bavaria, the builder 
and collector of all this, has been a great " Patron " of the Arts. 
Latterly his patronage is said to have taken another direction, and 
he has become a patron of Religion. The one is as proper a 
subject for patronage as the other. 

We entered the Tyrol on the 22d of October, after a light fall 
of snow, which weighed just enough on the fir trees to add a grace 
to their shapes, and on their dark green foliage sparkled in the 
sun, like a transparent silver canopy. Tyrolese scenery we saw 
in its most picturesque aspect. Our road went through Innspruck, 
the Capital of the Tyrol, lying in a capacious valley encompassed 
by mountains ; thence over the Bremer through Botzen, historical 
Trent, and Roveredo. Coming down from the chilly mountains, 
the sun of Italy was luxurious. What a fascination there is in 
this warm beautiful land ! 

We stopped half a day at Verona. Dante and Shakspeare 
have both been here ; Dante in person, as guest of the Scaligers, 
Shakspeare in Juliet, that resplendent diamond exhibited by the 
lightning of a tropical night-storm. Just out of the town they 
show a huge, rough, open stone coffer, as Juliet's tomb ; and in 
one of the principal streets, our cicerone pointed to a house which 
he said was that of the Capulets. Preferring to believe, we made 
no further inquiries. So, we have seen Juliet's tomb, and the 



114 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

house of the Capulets. We saw too the palace of the Scaligers, 
wherein, at the table of Can-grande, Dante hurled at his host that 
celebrated sarcasm. One can readily figure the sublime, thought- 
ful, sorrowful man, sitting silent as was his wont, scornful of the 
levities and follies of speech around him, and not keeping his scorn 
out of his great countenance, when, after some coarse sally from 
a favorite buffoon, the prince, turning to the poet, said, " I wonder 
that this man, who is a fool, can make himself so agreeable to us 
all, while you, who are called wise, have not been able to do so." 
— " You would not wonder," answered Dante, " if you knew 
that friendship comes of similarity of habits and sympathy of 
souls." 

At Verona we turned from our southward course, and went off 
due east to Venice, without halting in Vicensa and Padua, that 
lay in our path. We rowed in Gondolas, saw Titian's picture of 
the Assumption, walked over the Rialto, inspected the Arsenal, 
stood near the Bridge of Sighs, took chocolate in the place of St. 
Mark, and rowed back in the Lagune to Mestre, whence by Padua 
and Rovigo we came to Ferrara. From the people a traveller has 
to do with on the highways of Europe, he gets much of the 
caricature of what in the world is called politeness, namely, a 
smooth lie varnished. 

A scarcity of post-horses detained us a day in Ferrara, and the 
bridge over the Po having been swept away by late floods, we had 
to make a circuit to reach Bologna. The Manuscripts of Tasso 
and Ariosto in the Library, Ariosto's house and Tasso's prison, 
beguiled the time in the desolate old town of Ferrara. 

Off the beaten highways, from which the floods forced us, the 
people looked fresh and innocent. Wherever strangers throng, 
there knavery thrives. Hence, on the great routes of Europe, 
the traveller is constantly vexed and soured by impositions, from 
the most brazen to the most subtle. From the obsequious inn- 
keeper to the coarse postillion, he is the victim of the whole class 



POWERS'S SLAVE 115 



with whom he has to deal. Yet he would be very unjust who 
should thence infer that cheating and lying are habitual with the 
people among whom by these classes he is so often plagued and 
wronged. The country between Ferrara and Bologna overflows 
with population. Under this warm sun, the fertile valley of 
the Po yields meat, drink and clothing all at once ; silk, vine 
and grain growing in plenteous crops at the same time in one 
field. 

At Florence we found Powers with his model of the Greek 
Slave nearly finished. What easy power there is in genius ! 
Here is one of the most difficult tasks of sculpture, — a nude fe- 
male figure, — conceived and executed with a perfectness that 
completely conceals all the labor of thought and hand bestowed 
upon it. Most worthy to be a daughter of the Eve, this figure is 
altogether of another type, slender and maidenly. Like Eve, it 
is a revelation of the symmetry, the inexhaustible grace, the in- 
finite power and beauty of the human form. What an attitude, 
— how naturally brought about, — what a wonderful management 
of the resources of such limbs for expression ! It is a figure 

"To radiate beauty everlastingly." 

From it one learns what a marvellous work is the human body 
One feels himself elevated and purified, while contemplating a 
creation so touching and beautiful. Of this statue a distinguished 
American clergyman, whom we had the pleasure to meet in Italy, 
said, that were a hundred libertines to collect round it, attracted 
by its nudity, they would stand abashed and rebuked in its 
presence. 

This is the fourth ideal female head that Powers has produced, 
and yet there is not between any two of them the slightest re- 
semblance. Each one is a fresh independent creation. Not to 
imitate himself evinces in a sculptor even a still greater depth of 



116 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

resource than not to imitate the antique. It is proof of a mastery 
over the human countenance. Its elements and constituents 
Powers carries in his brain. This is the genuine creative 
energy. 

Greenough was absent in America, and his studio was closed. 
Clevinger was at work at the model of his Indian, his first ideal 
effort.* 

Pisa, famous for its leaning tower and its University, which has 
able professors, is, for one who wants quiet, a pleasant place to 
spend three months of winter. The Arno, flowing through it 
from east to west, for nearly a mile in a gentle curve, cuts 
the town into two parts, united by three bridges. Our front 
windows look out upon the river and its western bridge, and from 
one in the rear there is a view of the long jagged outline of the 
distant Appenines running towards Genoa, the highest peaks 
covered with snow. Our walks along the Lung-Arno carry us 
daily by the palace of Byron, the memory of whom does not seem 
to be much cherished by the Italians here. 

On the 22d of February we found ourselves in lively, dirty, 
commercial Leghorn, which vulgar cacophonous dissyllable is in- 
tended to be a rendering into English of the melodious Italian 
name of this town, which is Livorno. That the Mediterranean 
well deserves its reputation of being a very ugly sea in winter 
we had sickening proof. In a stout French steamboat we were 
two nights and a day, instead of one night, in getting from Leg- 
horn to Civita Vecchia. 

Friday, February 24th, 1843. 

We cast anchor in the small harbor of Civita Vecchia at seven, 

* The last time I saw Clevinger, he was standing before this work, with 
his frank, manly countenance animated by the pleasure and intentness of 
the labor. In the budding of his fame, he 'was cut off, a loss to hig family, 
his friends, his country. 



APPROACH TO ROME. 117 

landed at eight, and at ten set off for Rome. For several miles 
the road ran along the sea shore, through a desolate but not barren 
country, with scarce a sign of population. A few massive frag- 
ments of a bridge from the hands of the Romans, gave a sudden 
interest to the deserted region, and kept our minds awake until 
three o'clock, when, still eleven miles distant from Rome, we 
came in sight of St. Peter's, which drew us towards it with such 
force, that we wondered at the languor of the postillion, who 
drove his dull hacks as if at the end of our journey there were 
nothing but a supper and a snug hostelrie. We soon lost sight 
of St. Peter's. The fields, — and this is not strictly part of the 
Campagna, — still looked dreary and abandoned. Up to the very 
walls of the ancient mistress of the world, and the present 
spiritual mistress of many millions more than the Csesars ever 
swayed, the land seems as if it had long lain under a maledic- 
tion. At last, towards sundown, after an ascent, whence we 
overlooked the " Eternal City," the Cupola of St. Peter's filled 
our eyes of a sudden, and seemingly within a stone's throw of 
us. Descending again, we entered Rome by a gate near the 
Church, and, escorted by a horseman, whose casque led one to 
imagine him a mimic knight of Pharsalia, we drove close by the 
gigantic colonnade that encloses the court of St. Peter's, crossed 
the Tiber by the Bridge of Adrian, and after several turns through 
narrow streets, drove up to the temple of Marcus Aurelius An- 
toninus, with its front of fluted marble columns, under which we 
passed into the interior and there halted. 'Twas the Custom 
House, whence a dollar having quickly obtained for us release 
from the delay and vexation of search, we drove at dusk through 
the Corso to the Hotel de F Europe in the Piazza di Spagna. Here 
we spent the evening in planning, and in trying to think ourselves 
into a full consciousness that we were in Rome. 

Saturday, Feb. 25th. 

Before breakfast I took my first walk in Rome up the broad 



118 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

stairway from the Piazza di Spagna to the Pincian Hill ; but the 
atmosphere was hazy. Later, I walked down the Corso, whose 
Palaces look wealth and luxury. A Palace without political 
power, what is it but a gilded Prison, where refined sensuality 
strives to beguile the intellect in its servitude ! A scarlet gilt 
coach rolled by, with gorgeous trappings and three footmen in 
flaunting liveries crowded together on the foot-board behind ; an 
exhibition, which shows manhood most disgustingly bemasked, 
and is an unchristian ostentation of the mastery of man over man. 
'Twas the coach of a Cardinal ! of one who assumes to be the 
pre-elect interpreter of the invisible God ! of one whom millions 
believe to be among the most divinely-enlightened expositors of the 
self-denying Jesus' words ! Truly, God rights the wrong in our 
little world by general laws and stoops not to an individual ; else, 
it were neither unreasonable nor profane to expect that the sleek 
horses of this silken-robed priest might refuse to carry him to the 
altar, raised to him, who declared it to be hard for a rich man to 
enter into the kingdom of heaven. Possibly he is self-deluded ; 
for so great is the power of man upon man, that the world-wide 
and time-heaped belief in his sanctity may have persuaded even 
himself, that between his life and his doctrine there is no wide- 
gaping inconsistency. Some too, being stronger in religious 
sentiment than in intellect, are blinded, under the bandage of 
custom, to the monstrous imposture. But many a one, having 
capacity for and opportunities of culture, must be the conscious 
worshipper of ambition and the knowing defiler of the Holy, and 
his life therefore — what I leave each reader to name for himself. 
This is a gala-day in Rome, being one of the last of the Car- 
nival. At two we drove to the Corso, where we fell into a double 
file of carriages going in opposite directions. The Corso is the 
principal street of modern Rome, about a mile long, proud with 
palaces, columns, and open squares. Out of most of the nume- 
rous windows streamed long crimson silk hangings. At short 



THE FORUM. 119 



intervals were dragoons as a mounted police. The street was 
thronged with people, many in masks and fantastic costumes ; 
the windows were crowded with gaily dressed spectators. But 
the chief source of animation to the gay scene, is the practice of 
throwing bonbons and boquets from carriage to carriage, or in 
or out of the windows, or from or at the pedestrians, a general 
interchange in short of missile greetings. Most of the bonbons 
are of clay, or paste and flowers, and hence can be dealt out pro- 
fusely without much cost. You assail whom you please, and 
wire masks are worn by those who are careful of their eyes. 
'Tis an occasion when the adult lay aside their maturity and put 
on childhood again, and, as among children, there is the fullest 
freedom and equality. We knew not a soul in the throng, and 
dealt our handfuls of powdered pills into carriages and windows, 
and received them in turn, with as much glee as if we had been 
harlequins in a pantomime. We came in towards six. 

Sunday, Feb. 26th. 

We drove first to the Forum. Here then had been the centre 
of the Roman world ! There before you is a door of the ancient 
Capitol ! A few straggling columns and arches stand up still 
manfully against time. You think 'tis something to find your- 
self face to face with what has heard the voice of Cicero and the 
Gracchi, to shake hands, as it were, across a gulf of twenty cen- 
turies, with the cotemporaries of the Scipios ; when you learn 
that all that you behold are relics of the Imperial epoch. They 
showed us too the walls and two columns of a temple of Romulus 
with a door of well- wrought bronze. Although one likes to be- 
lieve on such occasions, we had to turn incredulous from these, 
and settled our minds again into positive faith before the arch of 
Titus, which stands at the end of the Forum opposite the Capitol, 
and is enriched with sculpture illustrating the destruction of 
Jerusalem, in commemoration of which it was erected to the 



120 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Emperor Titus. Passing under this, which Jews to this day- 
will not do, we drove down the Via Sacra to the Colosseum, near 
which is the arch of Constantine. Conceive of an elliptical 
Theatre with stone seats all round rising row back of rovv, to 
hold one hundred thousand spectators, who came in and out with- 
out delay or confusion through seventy inlets. Here in this vast 
arena may be said to have been represented the conflict between 
paganism and Christianity. Here were slaughtered tens of thou- 
sands of Christians, thrown to wild beasts as the most grateful 
spectacle to the Roman populace. The arena itself is now a 
Christian temple, sanctified by the blood of the faith-sustained 
victims. 

From the Colosseum we went to the Church of St. John of the 
Lateran, where, if what they tell you were true, are preserved 
the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul. We were shown too what 
the exhibiting priest said is the table on which Jesus took the last 
supper with the apostles. This with other relics is declared to 
have been brought from Jerusalem by Helen, the mother of Con- 
stantine. This is the oldest church in Europe, and is called the 
mother of all others. 

In the afternoon we drove to St. Peter's. I had not imagined 
the entrance to be so colossal. Before passing the immense por- 
tal, I was filled with wonder, which was not diminished by the 
view within. It is a symbol of the power and hopes of man. 
What a majestic work of human hands ! All its magnificent 
details are swallowed in its immensity. The one all-absorbing 
idea is vastness. 

Monday, Feb. 27th. 

Our first visit to-day was to Crawford's studio. His Orpheus 
is here reputed a statue of high merit. The conception is at 
once simple and rich. The attitude is well adapted to display 
life and grace, the long line from the hindmost foot to the end of 



THE CENCI. 121 



the curved arm, being one of the finest sweeps the human body- 
can present. The act of protecting the eyes with the hand, im- 
parts life as well by the shadow it casts on the countenance as 
by its characteristic propriety. The large fabulous-looking heads 
of the music-subdued Cerberus sleep well, and the group takes 
at once such hold of the imagination, that their expression seems 
that of involuntary sleep. 'Tis in itself a great merit in a work 
of art to make the mind of the beholder assist its effect. The 
selection of the subject and the execution are equally happy, and 
denote the genial Artist. We went next to Thorwaldsen's studio. 
Here I was somewhat disappointed.* 

At the Barberini Palace we saw the Beatrice Cenci of Guido. 
People go to see it on account of her most awful story ; and the 
story is not fully told to one who has not seen the picture. Guido 
was wrought up to his highest power of execution. The face is 
of the most beautiful, and through this beauty streams the bewil- 
dered soul, telling the terrific tale. It looks like a picture after 
which the artist had taken a long rest. It is wonderful. We 
next went hastily through the Doria Gallery, one of the richest 
private collections in the world. 

Tuesday, Feb. 28th, 

After breakfast I walked to the Minerva church to see the 
funeral ceremony for a Cardinal. In the square before the 
church was the Pope's carriage with six horses, and a score of 
the scarlet carriages of the Cardinals. The interior of the church 
was hung with black and gold. The body of the deceased Car- 
dinal lay in state, in the centre of the nave, on a broad bulky 
couch raised about ten feet. Around it at some distance were 
burning purple candles. The music of the service was solemn 
and well executed, in part by caatrati. The Pope descended from 
his throne, and, supported on either side by a Cardinal, and at- 

* It will be seen that this first impression was afterwards removed. 

7 



122 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE, 

tended by other ecclesiastical dignitaries, went to the front of the 
couch and pronounced absolution upon the deceased. He then 
walked twice round the body, throwing up incense towards it out 
of a golden censer. His pontifical robe was crimson and gold. 
He evidently performed the service with emotion. The whole 
spectacle was imposing and luxurious. The gorgeous couch and 
habiliments of the deceased, the rich and various robes, the pur- 
ple candles, the sumptuous solemn hangings, the incense and the 
mellow music, compounded a refined feast for the senses. Such 
ceremonies can speak but feebly to the soul. In the crowd that 
filled the large church, there was observable some curiosity, and 
a quiet air of enjoyment, but very little devotion. After the ser- 
vice, as the Pope's carriage on leaving the square passed close 
by me, an elderly man at my side dropped suddenly on his knees, 
shouting " Santo Padre, la benedizione," which the Pope gave as 
his horses went off in a trot, and of which I too, from my position, 
had a share. 

In the afternoon we hired seats in the Corso, to see the last day 
of the Carnival, The Italians, disciplined by Church and State, 
know how to run wild on such an occasion without grossness or 
disorder. People all shouting and fooling, and no coarse extrava- 
gances or interruptions of good humor. At sunset the street was 
cleared in the centre, and half a dozen horses started at one end, 
without riders, to race to the other. Afler this, the evening 
ended with the entertainment of the mocplOy which is a thin wax 
lighted taper, wherewith one half the crowd provide themselves, 
while the others, with handkerchiefs and similar weapons, strike 
at them to put them out. This makes an illurriination of the 
whole street, and keeps up a constant noisy combat. Thousands 
of people in masks and fantastic costumes. 

W^KDNESDAV, March 1st, )L^ 

If priests were raised nearer to God by distinguishing ih.eioh' 



ASH-WEDNESDAY. 123 



selves from their fellow-men. through the means of gorgeous gar- 
niture and pompous ceremony, the exhibition we this morning 
witnessed at the Sistine Chapel would have been solemn and 
inspiring. Up flight after flight of the broad gently ascending 
stairway of St. Peter's, we reached the celebrated Chapel. Seated 
on the pontifical throne, on one side of the altar at the further 
extremity of the Chapel, under Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, 
was the Pope. On his head was a lofty mitre of silver tissue, 
and his stole was of crimson and gold. To his right, on an ele- 
vated broad ottoman that ran along the wall of the Chapel and 
crossed it about the middle, were ranged more than twenty Car- 
dinals in robes of light purple silk and gold. Around the Pope 
was a crowd of ministering Prelates, and at the foot of each Car- 
dinal sat, in a picturesque dress, an attendant, apparently a priest, 
who aided him to change his robe, an operation that was performed 
more than once during the long service. The folio missal, out 
of which the Pope read, was held before him ; when he approached 
the altar from his throne his robe was held up ; and in the same 
way one of the attendant prelates removed and replaced several 
times his mitre. Part of the service consisted in kissing his foot, 
a ceremony which was performed by about a hundred bishops 
and prelates in various ecclesiastical costumes. This being the 
first day of Lent, Ash-Wednesday, the benediction of the ashes is 
given always by the Pope, and on the heads of those who have 
the privilege of kissing his toe (Cardinals don't go lower than 
the knee) he lays a pinch of the consecrated ashes. 

When I look back to the whole spectacle, though only after the 
lapse of a £ew hours, I seem to have been present at some bar- 
baric pageant. The character of the exhibition overbears my 
knowledge of its purport, and I could doubt that I have witnessed 
a Christian ritual. 

Afterwards in passing over Monte Cavallo, we came suddenly 
upon the colossal statues by Phidias and Praxiteles. 'Twas a 



124 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



rich surprise. Like St. Peter's and the Colosseum they sur- 
passed my expectation. Their heroic forms stood out against the 
sky like majestic apparitions come to testify to the glories of old 
Greece. 

In the afternoon we went to Gibson's studio, where we were 
pleased both with the artist and his works. 

Thursday, March 2d. 

First to the Capitol, built, under the direction of Michael 
Angelo, on the foundation of the ancient. Innumerable fragments 
and statues. In the Colossal River- God in the Court, the grace 
and slumbering power of the large recumbent figure are remark- 
able. According to our custom at the first visit, we went hastily 
through the gallery, only pausing before the dying Gladiator. 
Here, as in all master-pieces of Art, is the intense infusion of the 
will of the Artist into his work. This is the inscrutable power 
of genius. 

Thence to the Church of Santa Maria Majore, the nave of 
which is supported by thirty-six beautiful columns, taken from a 
temple of Juno. Modern Rome is doubly enriched out of the 
spoils of ancient. 

In the afternoon we drove to the Vatican. What a wilderness 
of marble ! You walk, I was about to say, for miles through 
avenues of sculpture. Of the Apollo, Laocoon, and Antinous, I 
can say nothing to-day, except that great statues lose much in 
casts. What an edifice ! Drove to the Villa Borghese. 

Friday, March 3d. 

Our first stage to-day in our daily travel over Rome was at the 
baths of Caracalla, one of the most emphatic testimonials of Roman 
magnificence. The ruins, consisting now of little else than the 
outer and dividing walls, cover several acres. Sixteen hundred 
persons could bathe at a time. Besides the baths, there were 



CHURCHES OF ROME. 125 

halls for games and for sculpture, and here have been dug up 
several masterpieces. Here and there a piece of the lofty roof is 
preserved, and we ascended to the top of one of the halls, whence 
there is a good view of a large section of the region of ruins. 
Except in the Fora and Arches, one sees nowhere columns among 
the ruins. These, as well as nearly all marble in whatever 
shape, being too precious to be left to adorn the massive remnants 
of Pagan Rome, have been taken to beautify the Churches and 
Palaces of her Christian heir. 

From the baths of Caracalla we went along the Appian way, 
passing the tomb of the Scipios, and under the arch of Drusus, 
to the tomb of Cecilia Metella, a large massive round tower, 
the largest monument ever raised to a woman. Thence to the 
Columbarium or tomb of the household of the Caesars. The 
name is derived from the resemblance of the structure to a 
pigeon-house, as well in its general form as in that of the little 
semi-circular receptacles for the ashes. 

In the afternoon we visited among other churches that of 
Santa Maria Degli Angeli, formerly the Baths of Diocletian, 
which was adapted to the shape and purpose of a church by 
Michael Angelo. A grand one it is with its immense pillars of 
Egyptian granite. 

As according to Roman Catholic usage, several masses are 
performed in one morning to as many different congregations, 
a given number of inhabitants would require as Catholics a much 
smaller number of churches than it would being Protestant. But 
were the whole people of Rome to assemble at worship, at the 
same hour, in as many churches as would be needed for easy 
accommodation, even then, nine tenths of them would be empty. 
For three or four centuries the population has been at no time 
more numerous than it is now, and seldom so numerous ; and 
owing to civil and foreign wars previous to the fifteenth century, 
and to the seventy years' absence of the Papal Court, it has 



126 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

probably not been greater than at present since the downfall of 
the Empire. So that there always have been ten times as many 
churches as are needed. Rome has a population of about one 
hundred and sixty thousand souls, and counts over three hundred 
churches. With thirty, all her people would have ample room 
for worship. Had half of the thought, labor, and money, wasted 
in building, adorning and preserving the others, been bestowed 
upon schools and seminaries, there would have been not less re- 
ligion, and far more mental culture and morality ; and Rome 
might now be really the intellectual and spiritual capital of the 
world, instead of being the centre of a decrepid form of Chris- 
tianity, to which she clings chiefly by the material ties that bind 
men to an ecclesiastical system which embosoms high places of 
worldly eminence. ^ 

Nothing is shallower than carpingly to point out how commu- 
nities or individuals might be better than they are. The above 
estimate is not made in a spirit of barren detraction ; it shows 
into what extravagant abuses of God's best gifts man is prone to 
run. There is at any rate comfort in the evidence here pre- 
sented, — if such were wanting, — of great spiritual vitality in 
human nature. Part of the gross misdirection thereof may be 
ascribed to the mental darkness during many of the first ag'es 
of Christian Europe, and part to the selfishness necessarily inhe- 
rent in a body constituted like the Roman Catholic priesthood. 
The darkness has been greatly diminished, and individual inde- 
pendence has been sufficiently developed not to abide much 
longer corporate usurpations, civil or ecclesiastical. There may 
be hope, that through this natural fund of spirituality, under 
healthier development and clearer guidance, humanity will go on 
righting itself more and more, and that under its influence even 
Rome shall be rejuvenated, and cease to be the hoary juggler, 
that out of the spiritual wants of man wheedles raiment of gold 
for her own body and mansions of marble. 



M. ANGELO'S MOSES. 127 

Drove out to Mount Sacer, and afterwards to the Pincian. 

Saturday, March 4th. 

Rain every day. Among the curiosities we this morning 
inspected in the library of the Vatican, were a collection 
of cameos and other small antiques dug up in Rome ; 
several of the bronze plates whereon were inscribed the de- 
crees of the Senate, but of the fallen Senate under the Empe- 
rors ; specimens of Giotto and Cimabue ; manuscript of Cicero's 
Treatise on the Republic, made in the fifth century, and written 
over by St. Augustine, with a treatise on the Psalms ; manuscript 
of Petrarch ; illuminated edition of the Divina Comedia ; papy- 
rus. To us as well as to the Pope it is a convenience that St. 
Peter's and the Vatican are cheek by cheek. On coming out 
of the library we entered the great church to enjoy its beautiful 
vastness. 

In the afternoon we went to see Michael Angelo's colossal 
statue of Moses in the church of St. Peter in chains, a beautiful 
church (the interior I mean) with twenty fluted Parian columns. 
Here are preserved, 'tis said, the chains of St. Peter. The 
Moses is a great masterpiece. It justifies the sublime lines of 
4he sonnet it inspired to Zappi : 

Questi e Mose quando scendea del monte, 
E gran parte del Nume avea nel Volto.* 

Power and thought are stamped on the brow ; the nose breathes 
the breath of a concentrated giant ; an intellectual smile sits on 
the large oriental mouth, which looks apt to utter words of com- 
fort or command ; the long, thick, folded beard bespeaks vigor, 
and gives grandeur to the countenance ; and the eyes, of which, 
contrary to the usage of high sculpture, the pupils are marked, 

* This is Moses when he came down from the mountain. 
And had in his countenance a great part of the Deity. 



128 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

absolutely sparkle. The figure is seated, with however one foot 
drawn back, as if ready to rise, an attitude correspondent to the 
life and fire of the countenance. From this grand work one 
learns what a mighty soul was in Michael Angelo. 

In the sacristy is a beautiful head by Guide, representing 
Hope, as rapt and still as an angel listening to the music of 
Heaven. In this church was held under the Emperor Constan- 
tine, as says an inscription in it, a council, which condemned 
Arian and other schismatics, and burnt their books. We next 
visited St. Martin on the Hill, also constructed with columns 
from an ancient temple. Through the church we descended into 
a vault below where had been Imperial baths, and afterwards a 
church of the early Christians before Constantine. Adjoining 
this venerable spot was an opening that led into the catacombs, 
where the persecuted Christians used to conceal themselves. 
On slabs in the upper church were inscribed the names of many 
martyrs w ose tombs had been found below ; among them those 
of several "'opes. Thence towards sunset, we went to the 
church of the Jesuits, laden, like so many others, with pictures 
and marbles and sparkling altars, and sepulchral monuments. 
The grand altar just finished cost upwards of one hundred 
thousand dollars. On one side of the church a thin sallow Jesuit 
in a dark robe and cap was preaching to about a hundred per- 
sons, chiefly of th. poorer class. I regretted that I had not come 
in time to hear n, re of his sermon, for a purer pronunciation 
and sweeter voice 1 never listened to. His elocution too was 
good and his gesticulation graceful, and his matter and manner 
were naif and unjesuitlike. He told his auditors that what the 
holy "Virgin required of them, especially now during Lent, was 
to examine their souls, and if they found them spotted with sins 
to free themselves therefrom by a full confession, and if not, to 
betake themselves more and more to the zealous cultivation of 
the virtues. There was a sincerity, simplicity and sweetness 



ST. PETER'S. 129 



in the feeling and utterance of this young man, that were most 
fascinating. When he had finished, he glided away into the 
recesses of the dim church like an apparition. 

Sunday, March 5th. 

To-day we remitted our labors. Late in the morning I 
walked up the stairway of the Trinity of the Mount to the gar- 
den of the Villa Medici ; and afterwards to Monte Cavallo to 
behold again the two colossal Greek Statues. They must be 
seen early or late, for at other hours the sky dazzles the sight 
as you attempt to look up at them. 

In the afternoon we drove to St. Peter's. Its immensity enlarges 
at each repeated beholding. 'Tis so light, — the interior I mean, 
— so illuminated, that it looks as though it had been poised from 
above, and not built upward from an earthly foundation. In one 
section of it is a series of confessionals, dedicated to the various 
languages of Europe. In each sat a priest ready to listen to and 
shrive in the tongue inscribed over his portal. Vespers at four. 
The voices were fine, but the music, not being sacred, was not 
effective in a church. One hears at times in music cadences of 
such expression, that they seem about to utter a revelation ; and 
then they fade of a sudden into common melody, as though the 
earthly medium were incompetent to transmit the heavenly voice. 

We drove afterward to the Pincian Hill in a cold north wind. 

Monday, March 6th. 

Walked before breakfast to Monte Cavallo. Our first stage 
after breakfast was to the house of Nero, over which were built, 
in part, the Baths of Titus. This is one of the best preserved 
bits of old Rome. The walls of brick are from three to five feet 
thick, the rooms nearly forty high. On some of the ceilings and 
walls are distinct specimens of Arabesque. Thence to look at 
the holy staircase of the Lateran, said to be of the house of 
Pontius Pilate. The feelings that would arise on standing before 

7* 



130 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



such an object is checked by doubt that will come up as to its 
authenticity. No one is permitted to mount the stairs except on 
his knees ; and being of stone, they are kept covered with wood 
to preserve them from being worn out. In the Church of Santa 
Croce in Gerusalemme, founded by St. Helen, the mother of Con- 
stantine, is preserved, 'tis said, the cross of one of the thieves 
crucified with Jesus. 

In the Gallery of the Colonna Palace we saw this morning 
several fine portraits and a beautiful St. Agnes, by^Guido, with 
that heavenward look he delighted to paint, and painted so well. 
In the magnificent Hall of the Palace we were shown the por- 
trait of the Colonna who commanded at Lepanto. In the after- 
noon we went for the second time to the Vatican. How the most 
beautiful things teach you to admire them ! Genius, which is by 
its essence original, embodies its idea, the totality whereof even 
the most genial sympathy cannot at first take in. By repetition the 
whole spirit of the creation is imbibed, and only then does the mind 
receive the full image of what it beholds, learning thus, by a 
necessary process, from beauty itself to appreciate its quality. 
Thus the Apollo will go on growing into our vision until we 
can, if not entirely, yet deeply enjoy its inexhaustible beauty. 
On coming out of the Vatican we walked again into St. Peter's. 
Are its proportions perfect and its colors all in unison, or is it its 
vastness that tones down all the constituents to harmony ? It 
fills me always with delight and wonder. 

Towards sunset we drove to the church of St. Peter, in Monto- 
rio, whence, from the terrace, is a sweeping view of Rome. We 
looked down over the " Eternal City." Directly in front, and 
east of us about a mile, was the majestic Colosseum. Between 
us and the Tiber was the Camp of Porsenna. To the lefl, 
beyond the Tiber, was once the Campus Martins, now the most 
thickly peopled quarter of modern Rome. An epitome of a large 
portion of the world's history lay at our feet. There stood the 



THE PANTHEON. 131 



Capitol of the Republic, and beyond, the ruins of the Palace of 
the Csesars, and all about us were the Palaces and Churches of 
their papal heir. Back of the Church is the Fontana Paolina, 
built of stone from the Forum of Nerva, by Pope Paul V., a 
Borghese. The water gushes out through five apertures in 
volume enough for a Swiss cascade. 

Tuesday, March 7th. 

We drove out this morning to the Villa Pamphili, the grounds 
of which, having a circumference of four miles, are the most 
extensive of the Roman villas. Here are stately umbrella-shaped 
pines. Fields of grass, thickly studded with flowers, verified what 
had hitherto been to me a poetic fiction. From the top of the house 
is a wide noble prospect. Returning, we drove through part of 
the Jews' quarter to the Square of Navona, the largest in Rome, 
in ancient times a race-course, now a vegetable market. In the 
afternoon we went to the Pantheon, the best preserved remnant of 
ancient Rome, built by Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus, as 
the great Hall of the public baths by him established, afterwards 
converted into a temple to Jupiter, then to all the Gods, whence 
its name, and as early as the seventh century consecrated a 
Christian Church, under the name of St. Mary of the Martyrs, 
by Pope Boniface IV., who buried under the chief altar twenty- 
eight wagon loads of relics of the martyrs. The light (and rain) 
comes in through a wide circle left open at the top of the dome. 
The pavement is of porphyry. Here Raphael is buried. We 
drove afterwards to the villa Borghese, crowded with ancient 
marble, among which is a long series of busts of Roman Empe- 
rors in " antique red." The heads are nearly all of one type, and 
denote the energetic, practical character of the Romans. The 
statue of Pauline, one of the treasures of the villa, is the most beau- 
tiful work I have seen of Canova. Returning, we saw near the 
gate some rich Italian faces. Italy reminds one at times of a 



132 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

beautiful Guido Magdalen, her tearful countenance upturned 
towards heaven, so lovely in her affliction, such subdued passion 
in her luxurious features, such hope in her lucent eyes. 

Wednesday, March 8th. 

We spent most of the morning in the studios of sculptors, and 
the afternoon in churches. What a multiplication of the human 
form in marble ! The Churches are peopled with statues brown 
with age, and in the studios they dazzle you with youthful white- 
ness. 

To describe in verse the surface of a man's mind is not to 
write poetry ; nor is the imitation of the human body the exercise 
of a fine Art. The Sculptor's function is to concentrate in one 
body the beauty and character of many. When he does this he 
creates, and until he creates, he is not up to his vocation. Nature 
is not always beautiful, but at the bottom of all her phenomena 
is the spirit of beauty. Her essence is beauty, and this essence 
the worker with the chisel must extract and then embody, else is 
he a barren Artist. 

We saw this morning Guido's Aurora. Here is a subject most 
apt for pictorial representation. The idea has sufficient intensity 
to irradiate the whole body. In few large compositions is there 
soul enough in the thought to animate the members ; or if there 
be fire, there is lack of beauty. Here the idea, the parent of the 
whole work, is both strong and beautiful, and the execution being 
correspondent, the effect is complete. Afterwards, in the Minerva 
Church, we saw a statue of Christ, by Michael Angelo. It wants 
character and beauty. The subject is not suited to Michael 
Angelo's genius. 

Thursday, March 9th. 

We visited this morning the studio of Wolf, a German sculptor 
of reputation. A sweet dancing girl and a graceful Diana 
attracted us most. The foreign Artists in Italy seem well nigh 



AN ENGLISH SERMON 133 



to take the lead of the native, owing, probably, to the enjoyment 
of greater liberty, the Italians being more under the chilling sway 
of academical rules, and the influence of the by no means pure 
example of Canova. We walked afterwards in the garden of the 
Villa Medici, the prison of Galileo during his trial, now the French 
Academy ; and into its hall of plaster casts, where is a collection 
of the best antiques. This is going into the highest company. 
These are genuine aristocrats, choice specimens of manhood and 
womanhood. With many of them, time and ignorance have 
dealt roughly. Some are without arms, others without legs, 
and some without heads, but still they live. In their mythology, 
what a Poem the ancient Greeks gave birth to and bequeathed 
to the world. We next went to one of the Churches, to hear a 
sermon from an English Catholic Prelate. During Lent, there 
is daily preaching in many of the Churches. Chairs were set for 
two hundred persons, but there were present not more than fifty. 
The preacher was evidently a man of intellect, but dry and argu- 
mentative. The drift of his discourse was to show that priests 
are essential to salvation. 

Men, with all their selfishness, and perhaps through a modifica- 
tion thereof, have ever been prone to give up their affairs in trust 
to others, the trustees dividing themselves into the three hitherto 
inevitable classes, the legal, the medical, and the theological. 
Some even avail themselves to the full of all these helps and sub- 
stitutes, abandoning the conduct of their worldly possessions to 
their man of business, their bodies passively to their physician, 
and their souls as passively to their pastor. These languid nega- 
tives are of course few. By degrees the axiom is getting to be 
valued, that to thrive, whether secularly or spiritually, a man 
must look to his own interests. People are beginning to discern, 
that health is not a blessing in the gift of Doctors, that Religion 
is independent of hierarchies, and that the first preachers of 
Christianity were quite a different kind of men from most of the 



134 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

latest. Some men are pre-eminently endowed to develope and 
feed the spiritual element of our nature, and most reverently do 
I regard and cordially hearken to such wherever I meet with 
them. As in the preacher before me, I perceived no marks 
of such inspiration, and as there was neither eloquence nor art to 
give his discourse the attraction of an intellectual entertainment, 
we soon left the church, a movement which can be effected here 
without notice. He handled his argument not without skill, and 
doubtless the sermon was edifying to most of his auditors, their 
minds having been drilled by him and his colleagues into the 
habit of acquiescence. 

The ordinary service was going on at the same time inde- 
pendently in a side chapel, where a very aged ecclesiastic, in 
a white satin embroidered robe, was saying mass, which to us, in 
the outskirts of the English Company, was quite audible. He 
was entirely alone, having no assistant at the altar and not a sin- 
gle worshipper ; until just before he concluded, a bright-faced 
boy, ten or twelve years of age, came in with a long staff, to put 
out the tall candle. Ere the venerable father had ceased praying, 
the little fellow had the extinguisher up, thrusting it now and then 
half over the flame with playful impatience. The instant the 
old man had finished, out went the candle, and the boy, taking 
the large missal in his arms, walked off, looking over towards us 
for notice, and restraining with difficulty his steps to the pace of 
the aged priest, who tottered after him. 

On leaving the church, we went for the first time to the 
Borghese Gallery, freely open to strangers, and to artists, of 
whom, in the different rooms, there were several taking copies. 
Strangers in Rome owe much to the unexampled liberality of the 
Italian nobles, in opening to them the treasures of their palaces 
and villas. 

In the afternoon to the Vatican, -where again we had a cloudy 
sky, and were therefore again disappointed before the great fres- 



SALVATOR ROSA. 135 



coes of Raphael, which, from the darkness of the rooms wherein 
they are painted, hav'n't light enough even on the sunniest days. 
On coming out we took our accustomed walk up under the dome 
of St. Peter's. 

Friday, March 10th. 

We visited this morning the Corsini Gallery, in which is the 
bound Prometheus of Salvator Rosa, with his fiery stamp upon it. 
The horror which a lesser genius could excite, cannot be subdued 
by any mastery of art. The keeper of the rooms, with the hostile 
feeling reciprocated among the inhabitants of the different sections 
of Italy, remarked, that none but a Neapolitan would choose so 
bloody a subject. Another remarkable picture in this collection, 
is a head of Christ bound with thorns, by Guercino. The agony, 
the fortitude, the purity are all there, and in the upcast translu- 
cent eyes is an infinite depth of feeling, as of mingled expostula- 
tion and resignation, that recalls vividly the touching words, " My 
God, my God, M'hy hast thou forsaken me ?" 'Tis one of the 
masterpieces of Rome. 

At twelve we found ourselves in St. Peter's, to witness the 
ceremony which takes place every Friday durinj^ Lent. The 
Pope, attended by his household and a numerous body of Cardi- 
nals and other prelates, says prayers successively at several dif- 
ferent altars. The Swiss Guard, in the old-time costume with 
pikes, formed a hollow oblong, within which the Pope and the 
whole cortege of priests knelt. For the Pope and Cardinals a 
cushion was provided ; the others knelt on the marble pavement. 
The Pope prayed inaudibly, and seemed to do so with heart. 
The strange uniform of the Guai'ds, the numerous robed priests 
kneeling behind their chief, the gorgeous towering vaults above 
them, and the sacred silence, made a beautiful scene. 

In the afternoon we drove to the Villa Mills, built above the 
ruins of the House of Augustus, on Mount Palatine. Through a 



136 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

door in the garden, round which clustered lemons, roses, and 
oranges, we descended to several of the rooms of Augustus, the 
floor whereof is about thirty feet below the present surface. From 
various points in the garden we had views of the majestic rem- 
nants of imperial Rome, — the Colosseum, the baths of Garacalla, 
the temple of Peace, part of the Forum, the temple of Vesta, the 
Pyramid of Caius Cestius, the tomb of Cecilia Metella, inter- 
spersed with convents and churches and scattered buildings. 
Over the wall on the southern side of the Villa grounds, you look 
directly down upon some remains of the Circus Maximus, which 
occupied the valley between the Palatine and Aventine Hills, and 
where took place the rape of the Sabines. It will take a long 
while for Niebuhr to efface belief in the reality of those early 
Roman doings. At last we ascended to a terrace built over a 
spot where had once been a temple of Juno, whence was a pros- 
pect of modern Rome with its throng of cupolas. We next 
mounted the Capitol Hill, to go into the Church Aracaeli. 

Saturday, March 11th. 

We visited this morning the Convent of tlie Sacre CoBur on the 
Trinild del Monte. This is a sisterhood of French ladies, some of 
them noble, devoted to the education of the upper classes. The 
establishment looked the model of neatness. The pupils, who 
had a uniform dress, rose and curtsied to us as we entered the 
rooms. They looked healthy and happy. The sisters had the 
manner and tone of well-bred ladies, chastened by seclusion from 
the rivalries of the world. It is one of the results of Catliolic 
organization and discipline, that in an institution like this, a field 
of utility is opened to those whom disappointment, or distaste for 
excitement, or a natural proneness to piety, disposes to withdraw 
from the world. Through the principle of association, the various 
resources of many are centred upon a high object, and much 
activity, that would otherwise have lain dormant or have been 



COiNVENT HYMN. 137 



wasted, is turned to excellent account. From one of the lofty 
dormitories, with its numerous clean white beds, we looked out 
into a broad garden belonging to the convent, and beyond this to 
the Ludovisi grounds and Villa. 

Afterwards, at the room of Flatz, a Tyrolese painter, we were 
charmed with the artist and his works. His subjects are all reli- 
gious, and are executed with uncommon grace and feeling. A 
pupil of his, too, Fink, is a young man of promise. 

There are people with minds so exclusively religious, that 
Religion does not, — as is its office, — sustain, temper, exalt their 
being ; it fills, it is their being. When the character is upright 
and simple, such persons become earnest and calm ; when other- 
wise, they are officious and sentimental. If their intellect is 
sensuous, they delight in the imagery and manipulating ceremo- 
nies of the Catholic worship, and then, having of course, by their 
original structure, no intellectual breadth or power, they will be 
liable, under the assaults of a picture-loving mind and absorbing 
devotional feeling, to become Rom^anists even in Rome itself! 

Sunday, March 12th. 

This afternoon we returned to the chapel of the Sacr^ Caeur, 
to hear the music at the evening benediction. 'Twas a hymn 
from the sisterhood, accompanied by the organ. The service 
commenced silently at the altar, round which curled profuse in- 
cense, that glowed before the lighted candles like silver dust. The 
few persons present were kneeling, when the stillness was broken 
by a gentle gush of sound from the invisible choir up behind us. 
It came like a heavenly salutation. The soft tones seemed mes- 
sengers out of the Infinite, that led the spirit up to whence they 
had come. At the end of each verse, a brief response issued 
from deep male voices at the opposite end of the church, near the 
altar, sounding like an earthly answer to the heavenly call. Then 
again were the ears possessed by the feminine harmony, that 
poured itself down upon the dim chapel like an unasked blessing. 



138 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Monday, March 13th. 

This morning, at the Spada Palace, we saw the statue of Pom- 
pey, which " all the while ran blood " when Csesar fell under the 
blows of the conspirators in the Capitol. 'Tis a colossal figure, 
about ten feet in height, of fine character, dignified, vigorous, and 
life-like. We drove afterwards out to the English burying-ground, 
where lie the ashes of Shelley, " enriching even Rome," as his 
wife had a right to say. I revere the character, and admire the 
genius of Shelley, yet I was not moved by the presence of his 
tomb. Emotion cannot be summoned at will, I have at times, 
in a holy spot, found myself in a state of utter insensibility, and, 
instead of turning my eyes inward under its spirit-moving influ- 
ence, have caught my lips playing with the reminiscence of a 
jest, as irrepressible as it was impertinent in such a place. For 
all that, the visit was not barren ; the feeling would come after- 
wards. 

In the afternoon, we visited the rooms of Overbeck, the distin- 
guished German painter, a great master in drawing and composi- 
tion. Like Flatz, his subjects are all scriptural. 

Very few artists being able to achieve the highest triumph in 
execution, which is the transparence and vivid beauty of healthiest 
life, addict themselves naturally, in a critical age, to an emulous 
cultivation of those qualities which through study are more attain- 
able, and then attach to them a kind of importance which they do 
not deserve. This seems to be the case just now with composi- 
tion, an element which may shine in a picture unworthy of per- 
manent regard, and which stands related to the genial quality in 
Art as the narrative does to the poetical in a printed volume. 
Under genuine inspiration, the parts of a work will always, when 
Art is out of its first rudiments, put themselves together compe- 
tently to the development of the idea, although the artist may not 
excel in composition ; but from the most skilful combination of 
the constituent parts, will never be generated that unfading charm 



COLOSSEUM BY MOONLIGHT. 139 

of life and beauty, which genius alone can impart, and the produc- 
tion whereof even genius cannot explain. In short, composition 
is the intellectual department of painting, and will be ineffective 
until vivified by the fire of feeling. 

We walked afterwards through the gallery of the Capitol, and 
then to the Tarpeian rock. 

Tuesday, March 14th. 

We commenced the day, which was bright at last, with a walk 
on the Pincian. Visited in the morning a second time the rooms 
of the German painter Flatz, and his pupil. We drove after- 
wards through the sunny air past the Forum and Colosseum out 
to the grand church of St. John of the Lateran, where, in the 
court, is the finest obelisk in Rome, brought, like the others, from 
Egypt, the land of obelisks. It is a single shaft of red granite, 
more than a hundred feet high. 

In the afternoon, we walked again on the Pincian, amidst a 
throng of people from all parts of the world, in carriages, on 
horseback, and on foot. How seldom you meet a fine old coun- 
tenance ; one that has been enriched by years, that has the au- 
tumnal mellowness of joyous and benignant sensations. Oftener 
you see on old shoulders a face corrugated and passion-ploughed, 
that may be likened to a river-bed, which, deserted by the turbid 
spring flood, shows a hard, parched surface, bestrewn with drift- 
wood and unsightly fragments, that tell how high the muddy tor- 
rent has revelled. At six, we went to see the Colosseum by 
moonlight. The wondrous old pile grows more eloquent still at 
night ; its vastness expands, its majesty grows more majestic ; the 
dimness of the hour seems congenial to its antiquity. The patches 
of moonlight glistening among its arches, look like half revela- 
tions of a thousand mysteries that lie coiled up in its bosom. It 
has the air of a mystic temple sprung out of the gloom, for a 
Sybil to brood in and prophesy. 



140 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Wednesday, March 15th. 

This morning, we drove out of the Porta del Popolo, the north- 
ern gate, a mile and a half just over the bridge of Mole, and 
returning along the right bank of the Tiber, with the Villa Ma- 
dama and Monte Mario on the right, we re-entered Rome near St. 
Peter's. Thence, passing through the busiest part of the modern 
city, we drove between the Palatine and Aventine hills, round the 
Colosseum, by the three columns that are left of the Forum of 
Nerva, into the gay Corso, passing thus, suddenly, as we do 
almost every day, from amidst the gigantic brown fragments that 
silently tell of the might of ancient Rome, into the bustle and 
ostentation of a modern capital. I spent an hour afterwards in 
Thorwaldsen's studio, with a still growing enjoyment. Great 
Poems are incarnations of a nation's mind, whence in weaker 
times it may draw nourishment to help to renew its vigor. The 
creations of Shakspeare and Milton rear themselves the steadfast 
mountains of the mental world of England, up to which the peo- 
ple can at all times ascend to inhale a bracing air. So, too, after- 
sculptors will be able to refresh themselves at the clear fountain 
of Thorwaldsen's purity and simplicity. 

Thursday, March 16th. 

We drove out to the new St. Paul's that they are building on the 
site of the old one, more than a mile out of the St, Paul Gate. 
This Church is one of the largest, and the Pope is rebuilding and 
adorning it in a style of unmatched magnificence. Nations and 
systems cannot, any more than individuals, pause in their career. 
Each must fulfil its destiny. From the bosom of Eternity they 
are launched forth, to perform a given circuit, and long after 
they have culminated, they continue, though under relaxed mo- 
mentum, to give out sparks of the original fire, and decline con- 
sistently to their end. The Papal State is loaded with a growing 
debt ; Rome has churches enough for ten times its actual popula- 



VIEW FROM THE CAPITOL. Ul 



tion ; advancing civilisation rejects more and more the sensuous 
as an auxiliary to the spiritual. Yet, at an enormous cost, this 
church is re-erected, dazzling with pillars and marble and gold, 
capacious to hold tens of thousands, though distant from the city 
in the blighted Campagna ; a token not only that the spirit of 
Romanism is unchanged, but that it has yet the will and vigor, 
in the face of material difficulties, and in defiance of civilisation, 
to manifesi; itself in mediseval pomp and unchristian magnificence. 
On getting back within the walls of the city, we turned into 
the Via Appia, and stopped at the tomb of the Scipios, down into 
which I groped with a lighted candle twenty or thirty feet below 
the present surface, in a labyrinth of low vaults, where I saw 
several vertical slabs with inscriptions. Afler dinner, we drove 
to the Villa Mattel, whence there is a fine view southward, of the 
aqueducts and mountains. Late in the afternoon I ascended to 
the top of the tower of the Capitol. The sky was cloudless, and 
the unparalleled scene seemed to float in the purple light. Moun- 
tain, plain, and city, the eye took in at a sweep. From fifteen to 
forty miles in more than a semicircle ranged the Appenines, the 
nearest clusters being the Alban and the Sabine Hills. Contract- 
ing the view within these, the eye embraced the dim Campagna, 
in the midst of which, right under me, lay the noisy city beside 
its silent mother. Looking down from such an elevation, the 
seven hills, unless you know well their position, are not traceable ; 
and most of the ruins, not having, as when seen from the plain, 
the relief of the sky, grow indistinct; only the Colosseum towers 
broadly before you, a giant among dwarfs, challenging your 
wonder always at the colossal grandeur of Imperial Rome. In 
the west, St. Peter's broke the line of the horizon. From 
countless towers, spires, cupolas, columns, obelisks, long shadows 
fell upon the sea of tiled roof. The turbid Tiber showed itself 
here and there, winding as of old through the throng. I gazed 
until, the sun being set, the mountains began to fade, the ruins to 



142 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



be swallowed up in the brown earth, and the whole fascinating 
scene wore that lifeless look which follows immediately the sink- 
ing of the sun below the horizon, the earth seeming suddenly to 
fall asleep. 

Friday, March 17th. 

Through the high walls that enclose the gardens and Villas in 
Italy, we drove out to the Villa Albani, reputed the richest about 
Rome in antique sculpture. There is a statue of Tiberius, which 
makes him shine among several of his imperial colleagues in grace 
and manly proportions, a distinction which he probably owes to the 
superiority of his Artist ; a fragment from the bas-reliefs of the 
Parthenon at Athens, and other esteemed antiques in half size and 
miniature, amidst a legion of busts, among them one of Themisto- 
cles, of much character. Unhappily, on these occasions you can- 
not give yourself up to the pleasure of believing that you gaze on 
the features of one of the great ancients ; for even the identity of 
the bust is seldom unquestionable, and of course still less so is 
the likeness. It were a goodly sight to behold an undoubted por- 
trait of Plato, or Socrates, or Brutus. The villa is in a florid 
style of architecture, and the grounds are laid out in straight 
walks between walls of evergreen. The day was balmy, and 
the parterre walls were alive with lizards darting about in the 
sunshine. We next drove out of the St. John Gate to get a near 
view of the aqueducts, which have been well likened to Giants 
striding across the Campagna. On re-entering the Gate, the front 
of St. John of the Lateran presented itself very grandly. It is 
purer than the faqade of St. Peter's, in which the perpendicular 
continuity is broken, a fault almost universal in the fronts of Ita- 
lian churches. The statues, too, on the St. John, from being co- 
lossal and somewhat crowded, have a better effect than statues in 
that position generally have. 

In the afternoon we drove and walked in the grounds of the 



SCIARRA GALLERY. 143 



Villa Borghese. The entire circuit is at least two miles, and the 
grounds are varied both by art and nature. Strangers can hardly 
be sufficiently grateful to the family that opens to them such a 
resource. I should have stated, when speaking of the statuary in 
the villa, that the original and celebrated Borghese collection of 
antiques was sold to the Paris Museum, in the reign of Napoleon, 
for thirteen millions of francs. The present collection has been 
made since that period. 

Saturday, March 18th. 

This morning we began with the Sciarra Gallery, one of the 
most choice in the world. In a single room, not more than 
twenty-five feet square, were thirty or forty pictures, estimated to 
be worth three hundred thousand dollars, comprising master- 
pieces by Titian, Raphael, Guido, Leonardo da Vinci, and others. 
For the celebrated Modesty and Charity of Leonardo, the size 
of which is hardly four feet by three, the good-humored old keeper 
told us an English nobleman offered fifty thousand dollars. These 
marvels of the pencil teach with glowing emphasis, that the es- 
sence of the Art is beauty. If this be a truism, the crowds of 
prosaic works one daily passes justify its reiteration. Thence 
we went to Mount Palatine, to explore the ruins of part of the 
Palace of the Csesars, adjoining the house of Augustus which 
we had already seen. Each of his successors for several ge- 
nerations seems to have enlarged the imperial residence, until, 
under Nero, it spread over the whole of the Palatine and Cselian 
hills and part of the Esquiline. What we saw to-day covers se- 
veral acres. The habitable part, of which there are only left 
fragments of thick brick walls, was built on high arches. The 
view from the top embraces the greater part of the ancient and 
modern cities, extending over the Campagna to the mountains. 
'Tis now a vegetable-garden, and where Emperors have dined, 
grows a luxuriant crop of artichokes. A bright-looking woman, 



144 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE, 

who was peeling onions, and who plucked for us a boquet of hya. 
cinths, told us that she paid for it seventy dollars annual rent. 
From the Palace we drove to the tomb of Augustus, where 
among other bones we saw the half of a skull, which the keeper 
protested was ancient Roman, and was ready to protest to be that 
of Augustus. 

In the afternoon we went to the rooms of Maes, a Belgian 
Artist of talent, and then drove out to the church on Monte Mario, 
whence the view is very fine. A lad, who had care of the church, 
told us, that in the Convent adjoining lived two Dominican friars, 
there not being means to support more. Each of them receives 
five dollars a month, besides twenty cents a day for saying mass, 
making about eleven dollars a month to each for clothing and 
food. A man here can keep his body well covered with flesh for 
ten cents a day. His meat will be chiefly maccaroni and his 
drink water, a good fare for longevity. Be it as it may, there is 
no class of people in Italy with fuller skins than the friars. 

In the evening we saw, at about seven o'clock, the long bright 
tail of a comet. 

Sunday, March 19th. 

This morning I heard a sermon at the Church of the Jesuits. 
The subject was the perfections of Joseph as husband and father, 
who, the preacher often repeated, had all the realities of the ma- 
trimonial union without its chief function, and performed all the 
functions of a father without having the reality. He enforced, 
happily and with pure feeling, from the example of Joseph, the 
sanctity of the marriage tie, and the supreme obligation of duty. 
It was a practical, animated, sound discourse, which commanded 
earnest attention from his audience, that consisted of the middle 
and lower classes, and was very numerous, filling nearly the 
whole area of the large church. 

In the afternoon, we went to hear a celebrated French Jesuit 



FRENCH JESUIT. 145 



preach, at the church called St; Louis of the French. In a dis- 
course of more than an hour, to which a large, educated audi- 
tory listened with unwearied attention, the preacher summed up 
with skill and eloquence the chief arguments of the Roman Ca- 
tholic Church against Protestantism. In an emphatic and adroit 
manner he presented the best that can be said in favor of the unity 
and infallibility of the Roman Church. He laid down, that Re- 
ligion could be preserved but by one of three means ; either, first, 
by God making a separate revelation thereof to each individual 
man ; or secondly, by his having embodied it in a book, which 
each was to interpret for himself; or thirdly, by instituting a 
Church to whose guardianship he committed it. After endeavor- 
ing to show, that the third was the only means consistent with the 
sihiplicity of the divine government, he went on to set forth, that 
Christ established one Church, that that Church was by its nature, 
origin, and design, infallible ; and in a brilliant sophistical passage 
he attempted to demonstrate the inherent necessity of intolerance 
towards doctrine, concluding with the position, that without such 
a church there would be no faith, no religion. 

What a pitiful piece of work were man, if to his fellow-man he 
owed the very enjoyment of his highest faculty. How ignoble 
and parasitical must that Jesuit deem his brother men ! But it is 
just and inevitable, that they who by men have been unduly ex- 
alted, should look down upon those who have bowed the neck 
under their yoke. Without any direct knowledge of the fact, it 
might be inferred, that no class of men have a lower opinion of 
mankind than the Romish priesthood. No religion without the 
Church ! Why, the Roman and all other churches that have ever 
existed or will ever exist, are effects of religion, not its cause, — 
the creatures of man, not his masters — and, as such, obsequious 
ever to his movements ; sucking blood when he has been cruel, 
relentless when he has been intolerant, humane when he has be- 
come humanized ; presumptuous towards his inactivity, humble 

8 



146 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

towards his independence ; aristocratic in one country, demo- 
cratic in another — here upholding slavery, there denouncing it ; 
always a representative of the temporary condition of society. 
Why were the Catholic priests more openly rapacious and lust- 
ful before the Reformation than since ? Why is the priest in 
Spain different from the priest in Sweden, or the Catholic priest 
of the United States more true to his chief vow than his fellow 
in Italy ? There is but one unity, and that is the universal in- 
nateness in man of the religious sentiment. The form wherein 
it clothes, the creed wherein it embodies itself, depend upon civi- 
lisation, temperament, climate, policy, and to these the priest ine- 
vitably fashions himself. But as effects reflect often back upon 
their causes, creeds and hierarchies re-act, with more or less 
power, upon Religion itself; and it is a symptom of a baleful 
influence, and of an unmanly passiveness in man, when so de- 
grading a doctrine gets to be part of his creed, as that he owes 
his religion to his priest. 

To learn what priestcraft is, we need not however go so far as 
Catholic Italy, although there its deformity is the most revolting 
in Christendom. Some very unequivocal exhibitions of it may 
be seen among the Protestant isms of our country, notwithstand- 
ing that the mass of our population is in mental freedom and 
strength raised above that of Europe, and that comparatively, 
through the severance of Church and State, we enjoy religious 
liberty. Priesthood, performing a necessary part in human soci- 
eties, is, like the other institutions for the furtherance of man's 
estate, subject under all forms and circumstances to corruptions. 
The benefits resulting from a priesthood, like the benefits result- 
ing from a magistracy, are purely those of organization. In the 
earlier stages of culture, or when humanity is partially developed, 
priests form a distinct authorized power, which, being men, it is 
of course their tendency to abuse. As society through individual 
culture developes itself, this organization becomes more and more 



THORWALDSEN'S ST. JOHN. 147 

merged in the general social one. Priests are first dropped by 
the state and then by individuals, and the religious element, re- 
incorporated, as it were, into the whole nature, receives its culti- 
vation along with the other nobler sentiments of man. Rituals 
and Hierarchies are but the forms through which for a time it 
suits Religion to express and cherish herself; they are transient, 
only Religion is perennial. Forms, in their healthiest state, 
waste somewhat of the substance they are designed to set forth. 
At their birth, they are tainted with insincerity ; when mature, 
they grow hypocritical ; and in their old age, they get to be bare- 
faced falsehoods, and then they die. In religion, as in politics, 
and in all things, man becomes weak in proportion as he surren- 
ders himself to the power or guidance of others. This surrender 
is totally different from helpful co-operation, as well as from re- 
ciprocal subordination according to inborn superiorities. 

Monday, March 20th. 

At Thorwaldsen's studio, I stood again long before the St. John 
preaching in the wilderness. This is a group of twelve parts, 
ranged in a line declining on either side from the central figure, 
to suit its destination, which is the tympanum of a church 
in Copenhagen. St. John, in his left hand a cross, which 
serves him too as a staff, and his right raised towards Heaven, 
stands in the centre, with a countenance mild and earnest, his 
look and attitude well expressing the solemnity of the tidings he 
proclaims. 

The first figure on his right is a man, apparently about thirty, 
with the left foot on a high stone, and one elbow on his knee, his 
chin resting in his hand. His fixed look is not turned up as if to 
catch the falling words of the speaker, but is outward as though 
his mind were busy with something that had gone before. — Next 
to him is a group of two figures, the first a turbaned man of mid- 
dle age, with hands crossed at his waist, in the simplest erect 



148 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

attitude of deep attention, his closely draped light body in the 
most perfect repose, while his bearded countenance is intent upon 
that of St. John with the animated expression of one accustomed 
to thought, and whose mind is now deeply wrought upon by the 
words he hears. Behind him, and gently resting on his shoul- 
der, is a beardless youth, like the elder one before him, who may 
be his father, attentive but passive. — The third figure is a mother, 
half kneeling, behind her a boy seven or eight years of age, with 
chin on his hands that are crossed on her right shoulder. — The 
fourth, an old man seated, with long beard and turban, a tranquil 
venerable figure. — The fifth, and last to the right of St. John, is 
a youth recumbent, supporting his upturned head with his lefl 
arm. 

The first figure on the left of St. John is a boy about fifteen, 
looking up into his face with half open mouth and a beaming 
expression, as if the words he was listening to had unlocked his 
soul. — Next to him is a middle-aged priest, with both hands 
before his breast resting on a staff. His countenance is strong 
and rugged, and his brows are knit as if his mind were in a state 
of resistance to what he heard. — The third figure is a hunter. 
He looks melted by the preacher, and has an aspect of devout 
acquiescence. By a band he holds a fine dog, upon which is 
fixed the attention of, — the fourth group, two bright children, a 
boy and girl of nine and eight, their faces alive with childish 
pleasure. — Behind them, the fifth figure, is a female seated, their 
mother apparently, who is restraining before her a third younger 
child. — The sixth and last figure is a shepherd, recumbent, with 
open mouth and joyful look. 

This subject is peculiarly fitted to sculpture, from the union of 
perfect bodily repose with mental animation. The conception, 
which is the happiest possible for such a group ; the ease, life, 
correctness and grace of the figures ; the contrasts in their 
postures, ages, conditions, sex, expression ; the calm power evi- 



TASSO'S HEAD. 149 



dent in the fertility and purity of the invention ; the excellence 
of the execution ; the distribution of the parts, and the vivid cha- 
racter of each figure, make this work one of the noblest of modern 
sculpture. 

In the afternoon we went through the Gallery of the Vatican. 
From an unnecessary and ungracious arrangement, in order to 
see the pictures, you are obliged to walk nearly the whole length 
of the range of galleries in the two stories, a distance of more 
than a mile, so that you are fatigued when you come in front of 
the pictures, where, moreover, there are no seats. — We went 
afterwards to the church of St. Onofrio, not far from St. Peter's. 
Here I saw a representation in wax of the head of Tasso, from a 
mask taken after death. Were there any doubt as to the genu- 
ineness of this head, the cranium were almost sufficient to dispel 
it, being just such a one as is fitted to the shoulders of an excita- 
ble poet. The monks keep it in their library. Another treasure 
they possess is a Madonna and child in fresco, by Leonardo da 
Vinci, which, notwithstandinor the injury of time, breathes forth 
the inspiration imparted to it by that wonderful genius. Neither 
this, nor the mask of Tasso, both being in the convent to which 
the church is attached, can be seen by women, except through 
special permission from the Pope. Below in the church is Tas- 
so's Tomb. 

Tuesday, March 21st. 

At the rooms of Vellati, an Italian painter of landscapes and 
hunting pieces, we saw this morning the Magdalen of Correggio 
recently brought to light, Vellati having discovered it under 
another picture which had been painted over it, and which he 
bought for fifteen dollars. With great labor, by means of the 
point of a needle, the upper painting was removed without injur- 
ing the gem beneath it. Its size is about fifteen inches by twelve, 
and the price asked for it is five thousand pounds sterling ; but 



350 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

its value cannot be counted in money. It is the duplicate of the 
celebrated picture at Dresden. In the same rooms was a fine 
landscape by Rembrandt. 

In the Piazza del Popolo is a meagre exhibition of pictures, the 
best painters always drawing amateurs to their private rooms. 
We went afterwards to the Farnesian gardens, which are entered 
from the Forum, to see remains of the palaces of Nero and Cali- 
gula and of the House of Augustus. We groped down into the 
baths of Livia. We walked through the Forum to the Colosseum, 
and afterwards in the Borghese Gardens. 

Wednesday, March 22d. 

This morning we saw the Cenci again. What a gift of genius, 
to reproduce such a face in all its tremulous life ! With a deep, 
awful, innocent look, it seems to peer into your soul and pray 
you for sympathy. Doubt has been thrown upon its genuineness. 
If it be a creation and not a portrait, it is the more wonderful. 
Its character is so perfectly in unison with the mysterious heart- 
rending story of Beatrice Cenci, that, had it been discovered long 
years after her tragic end and without any clue to its origin, it 
might and probably would have been appropriated to her. We 
drove afterwards to the church of St. Peter in chains, to see for 
the second time the Moses of Michael Angelo. I observed to-day, 
that with the instinct of genius (in the heads of the antique the 
ear is further forward) he has placed the ear far back, which 
heightens the intellectual character of the head. In gazing at 
this powerful statue again, I felt that in Art 'tis only beauty that 
ensures constancy. The Moses is grand and imposing, but one 
does not look forward to a third visit with that anticipation of 
growing enjoyment, with which one goes back to the Apollo or 
the Laocoon. Liberate the Laocoon from the constraints of force 
and pain, and it would stand before you a body pre-eminent for 
beauty and justness of proportion. On the other hand, suppose 



CARDINAL FESCH'S GALLERY. 151 

the body a common one, and the work sinks to a revolting 
mimicry of corporeal suffering. 

One who resides long in Rome is liable to be sucked back into 
the past. Behind him is an ocean of movement and thought, out 
of which rise countless fragments and monuments, that daily 
tempt him to exploration. A man might here lean his whole 
being against antiquity and find it a life-long support. The pre- 
sent becomes but a starting point whence he would set out on 
voyages into the past. — Walked out at the Porta Pia. 

Thursday, March 23d. 

This morning we went to the Villa Negroni, the neglected 
grounds of which are in great part occupied by a vegetable gar- 
den. The sun was just enough veiled by thin clouds to make 
walking agreeable, and although the Villa is far within the walls, 
we strolled for half an hour over twenty or thirty acres of arti- 
chokes, onions and peas, enjoying a wide sweep of the mountains. 
— We then went to see Cardinal Fesch's gallery, containing alto- 
gether twenty thousand pictures. Exempt from the officious 
promptings of a Cicerone, we lounged from room to room, choosing 
for ourselves, and appealing to the voluminous catalogue to back 
our vision or resolve doubts. After one has obtained, by famili- 
arity with galleries, some knowledge of the best masters, it is 
delightful to be let loose in this way upon a new collection. This 
one is celebrated for Flemish and Dutch pictures. 

Great part of the afternoon we passed among the statues of the 
Vatican. The Perseus looks as if Canova had studied the antique 
more than nature. The one sole mistress in Art being Nature, 
all that the artist can gain from the works of others is the best 
mode of seizing the spirit of the one common model, of compassing 
her beauties, so that he shall be able to reproduce what shall be 
at once ideal and natural. Not to imitate their forms, but to ex- 
tract from them how their authors imitated the best of nature so 



152 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

truly, should be the aim of the young sculptor in scanning the 
Apollo or Laocoon. If he can make the wondrous work before 
him reveal the process of the worker, then he can profit by the 
example. If he cannot, then he has not the innate gifts of a high 
artist. But this process of the great masters he will not only fail 
to detect, by copying the forms that have come from human hands, 
but by such servility (for it is servility, be the model Phidias 
himself) he weakens his original powers, and gradually disables 
himself from standing up face to face before his living mistress. 
To the young sculptor, the antique should be an armory where 
he can fortify his native powers for the loving conflict he has to 
wage with vigorous beaming nature. In the Perseus, 'tis appa- 
rent the free play of the artist's mind was under check. You 
behold the result of fine powers in partial servitude. Neverthe- 
less, both it and the boxers beside it are noble works. I went 
next to the Capitol, whence, after gazing at the Gladiator, and 
examining the busts of Brutus and Csesar, I walked down into 
the Forum about the base of the Capitol, among piles of broken 
columns. 

Friday, March 24th. 

This morning I paced St. Peter's to get for myself its dimen- 
sions. Walking without effort, I counted two hundred and sixty 
steps as the length of the great nave, thirty-seven as its width, 
and one hundred and eighty as that of the transept. I counted 
twenty-six altars. Its statues, mostly of gigantic size, and its 
mosaic pictures, I did not undertake to count. It is reputed to 
have cost about fifty millions of dollars. 

Do not Painting and Sculpture require for their excellence a 
predominance of the sensuous over the meditative ? The Catholic 
religion, the parent, or, at least, the foster-mother of modern 
painting, appeals largely to the senses; and the Grecian my- 
thology, the nurse of ancient sculpture, still more so. The pre- 



THE POPE. 153 



sent tendency is towards the spiritual and rational, and the fore- 
most people of Europe, the English, possessing the richest written 
poetry in the world, is poor in the plastic Arts. The great 
features of the German, English and American mind, are deep 
religious and moral emotions, the fruits of whose alliance with 
reason are far-reaching ideas and wide-embracing principles, 
which sway the thoughts and acts of men, but which can be but 
faintly represented in bodily images. 

This sounds well enough, but great modern names refute it. 
Your fair-looking edifice of logic proves but a house of paper 
before the breath of great facts. 

Saturday, March 25th. 

We went to look at the continuation of Cardinal Fesch's collec- 
tion of pictures in a neighboring Palace, but all the best are in 
the first which we saw a few days since. The keeper unlocked 
a large room in which pictures were piled away in solid masses 
one against the other. I noted No. 16,059 on one of them. 
Fourteen hundred dollars a year rent is paid for the rooms the 
whole collection occupies. — We then went to the Minerva Church 
to witness a religious ceremony, in which the Pope is carried on 
the shoulders of his attendants. We got into the church in time 
to have a good view of him seated in a rich throne-like chair, 
which rose just above the dense crowd, borne rocking along, as 
on a disturbed sea of human heads. Carried on either side of him 
were two large fans of peacock's feathers, which might be called 
the sails of the golden vessel. We afterwards walked in the 
Gregorian Gardens, a public walk near the Colosseum, between 
the Cselian and Palatine Hills. — In the afternoon we drove out to 
see the Torlonia Villa. 

Canova's statuary wants what may be called the under move- 
ment, which Thorwaldsen's has, and which is by no means given 
by pronouncing the muscles, but by a union of sympathy for vital 

8* 



154 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

forms with clean firm manipulation. In Powers this union is 
more intimate than in any modern sculptor. 

Sunday, March 36th. 

We walked this morning on the Pincian Hill, and in the after- 
noon drove three miles out of the Porta Pia to a Roman ruin, 
whence there is a fine view of the mountains and over the Cam- 
pagna all round. Behind us was Rome, and stretching out from 
it over the plain towards the mountains were the aqueducts. 

In Italy, the past is a load chained to the feet of the present. 
The people drags after it, like a corpse, the thought, feeling, act 
of by-gone generations. Tradition comes down like the current 
through a narrow strait, behind which is an ocean. Here, 
more than in most parts of old Europe, the health-giving trans- 
formations go on languidly ; the old is not consumed to give place 
to the hourly created new. The dead and effete is in the way 
of the quick and refreshing. Hence, languor and irregularity in 
the currents of life, causing in the body-politic, obstructions and 
stoppages, and all sorts of social, religious, and political dyspep- 
sias, congestions, rheumatisms, constipations. 

Monday, March 27th. 

Returned with renewed enjoyment to Thorwaldsen's studio. 
Naturalness and ease are his characteristics. He has not a very 
high ideal of beauty, and seems to avoid the nude, which is the 
severest test of the artist. — Thence we went to the Church of St. 
Lorenzo, in Lucina, where a fine voice was singing. To strive, 
by such factitious ceremonies as those of the Romish worship, to 
symbolize the divine, is a degradation of the holy that is in us. 
It is summoning the solemn spirits of the soul to take part in a 
fantastic pageant of the senses. — We walked afterwards in the 
Gregorian Gardens, and on the ruins of the Palace of the Caesars. 
Thence to look once more at the marvels of the Sciarra Gallery 



FRASCATI. 155 



— In the afternoon, on coming out of Crawford's studio, we drove 
over the river to St. Peter's. 

Tuesday, March 28th. 

We set out at nine for Frascati. Three miles from the St. 
John's Gate we passed under an aqueduct, still used, and near 
the erect ruins of another. The Campagna, without trees or en- 
closures, and almost without houses, is much less level than it 
looks from the heights in Rome. We passed several shepherds 
with their flocks, and parties of peasants ploughing, with large, 
long-horned, long-legged, meek, white oxen. The plough had 
one upright handle, and by this the men supported their weight 
on it, ibr the purpose of turning up a deeper furrow of the dark 
soil. As we drew near to Frascati, the Alban mountains, which 
from Rome present themselves in a compact cluster, broke up 
into separate peaks, the hill sides covered with olive trees, which 
looked darker and more leafy than I ever saw them, and 
Villas with their wooded grounds shining out distinctly. From 
Frascati, which is not half way up the range of mountains, you 
have a clear view of Rome, twelve miles distant, and of the Medi- 
terranean. Immediately after arriving, we set out for Tusculum, 
which lies almost two miles higher up, near the summit of one 
of the peaks. Before we got half way rain began to fall, and the 
sky was entirely overcast when we reached the ruins, consisting 
of an amphitheatre and part of the walls of the ancient city of 
Tusculum. Descending, we were glad to take shelter in Cicero's 
house, which is on the other side of the ridge. What is left of it, 
is six or eight deep arched rooms in a row, without direct com- 
munication with one another, and all pointing south on a passage 
way or portico. My imagination refused to bring Cicero before 
me otherwise than as looking out from his arches impatiently on 
a rainy day. In a hard shower we descended to the tavern, and 
after dinner drove rapidly back to Rome. 



1^6 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Wednesday, March 29th. 

What is called the bust of young Augustus, in the Vatican, is 
much like Napoleon when he was General, We walked round 
the Rotunda, where are the Perseus of Canova, the Antinous, the 
Laocoon, and the Apollo. What a company ! and what a privi- 
lege it is to behold them. We drove afterwards to the Colosseum 
and for the first time ascended among the arches. Its vastness 
and massive grandeur never cease to astonish me. 

In the afternoon, when we had looked at the pictures in the 
Academy of St. Luc, we drove to the Pincian Hill at five. The 
whole Heaven was strewn with fragments of a thunderstorm. 
Through them the hue of the sky was unusually brilliant, and 
along the clear western horizon of a pearly green. Standing at 
the northern extremity of the Hill, we had, to the south, the maze 
of pinnacles, cupolas, towers, columns, obelisks, that strike up out 
of the wide expanse of mellow building; to the right, the sun and 
St. Peter's ; and, to the left, a rural view into the grounds of the 
Borghese Villa, where, over a clump of lofty pines, lay the darkest 
remnants of the storm, seemingly resting on their broad flat sum- 
mits. The gorgeous scene grew richer each moment that we 
gazed, till the whole city and its fleecy canopy glowed in purple. 
We walked slowly towards the great stairway, and paused on its 
top as the sun was sinking below the horizon. 'Twas an Italian 
sunset after a storm, with Rome for the foreground. 

As, after returning to our lodging, I sat in the bland twilight, 
full of the feeling produced by such a spectacle, in such a spot 
and atmosphere, from the ante-room came the sound of a harp 
from fingers that were moved by the soul for music, which is 
almost as common here as speech. After playing two sweet airs, 
it ceased : it had come unbidden and unannounced, and so it went. 
This was wanted to complete the day, although before it began I 
did not feel the want of anything. There are rare moments of 
Heaven on Earth, which, but for our perversity, might be frequent 



ST. MICHAEL. 157 



hours, and sanctify and lighten each day, so full is Nature of 
gifts and blessings, were the heart but kept open to them. But 
we close our hearts with pride and ambition, and all kinds of 
greeds and selfishness, and try to be content with postponing 
Heaven to beyond the grave. 

Thursday, March 30th. 

We visited, this morning, the Hospital of St. Michael, an im- 
mense establishment for the support and instruction of orphans, 
and an asylum for aged poor. Tt is divided into four compart- 
ments ; for aged men, of whom there are now one hundred and 
twenty-five ; for aged women, one hundred and twenty-five ; for 
boys, two hundred and twenty ; and for girls, two hundred and 
seventy-five ; making altogether seven hundred and forty-five, as 
the present number of its inmates. We saw a woman one hun- 
dred and three years old, with health and faculties good. The 
boys are taught trades and the liberal arts, and are entitled to the 
half of the product of their work, which is laid up for them, and 
serves as a capital to start with when they leave the institution at 
the age of twenty ; besides which, each one receives on quitting 
thirty dollars for the same purpose. The girls weave and work 
with the needle, and, if they marry, receive one hundred dollars 
dower, and two hundred if they go into a convent. They, as 
well as the boys, are taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and 
vocal music. The superintendant, who was throughout exceed- 
ingly obliging and affable, let us hear several pieces of music, 
admirably executed by a number of the boys. 

The income of this Institution, from foundations made chiefly 
by former Popes, is twenty-eight thousand dollars, to which is 
added upwards of five thousand paid by some of those admitted 
into its walls, or by their patrons. The arrangements and admi- 
nistration seem to be judicious. Order, industry, and contentment, 
were visible in all the compartments. It is a noble institution, 
which does honor to Rome. 



158 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

In the afternoon, we visited the Villa Ludovisi, in olden time 
the garden of Sallust. Among several fine antique statues, that 
have been dug up in the grounds, is a magnificent colossal head 
of Juno. I afterwards walked home from the Colosseum, in the 
warm spring air, taking a look on the way at the Moses of Michael 
Angelo. 

Friday, March 31st. 

Through narrow lanes, enclosed by high garden walls, we 
walked this morning on Mount Aventine. In the afternoon, we 
drove out to the grotto and grove of Egeria. At the grotto, 
where is the fountain, they pretend to show the stump of a column 
of the original portico, and the trunk of a statue of Numa Pom- 
pilius, in whose day there were neither porticos nor statues. From 
this spot there is a fine view towards Frascati and the hills. On 
the way, we stopped at a church without the walls, where a friar 
showed a marble slab, indented with two foot-prints, which he 
said were made by Jesus Christ, when he quitted St. Peter, to 
whom he appeared to rebuke St. Peter for deserting his post at 
Rome. The impressions are rudely cut, and the toes of the feet 
are all nearly square, but they nevertheless probably keep the 
poor friar and some of his brethren in food and fuel the year round. 

The ancient sculptors had an advantage over the modern, in 
the profusion of poetical subjects ; for every deity of their pro- 
lific mythology is poetical, that is, unites in itself all the perfec- 
tions of a class, and stands as the ideal representative or symbol 
of wants, desires, or ideas. The modern artist is tasked to find 
individuals that have a generic character or significance. The 
defect in sacred subjects is, that they must be draped, and thus 
do not admit of the highest achievement in sculpture, which is, 
to exhibit the human body in its fullest beauty of form and 
expression. 

Satitrday, April 1st. 

In the morning we visited the rooms of Mr. Rosseter and Mr. 



ST. PETER'S 159 



Terry, two young American painters of promise, and walked 
about the Colosseum. After taking a last look at the beautiful 
resplendent St. Michael of Guido in the Chapel of the Capuchins, 
we drove to see the drawing of the lottery, which takes place 
every Saturday at noon in the square of Monte Citorio. From a 
balcony, where priests presided, the numbers were drawn to the 
sound of music, the square well covered with people, mostly of 
the working classes. In the afternoon, after taking another look 
at Vallati's Correggio, we walked on the Pincian Hill. 

Sunday, April 2d. 

It is four o'clock in the afternoon. Seated against the huge 
base of a pilaster, beneath the dome of St. Peter's, I have taken 
out my pencil to note down what is passing around me. In front, 
near by, directly under the cupola, in the centre of the church, 
is the great Altar, beneath which in the vaults is the tomb of St, 
Peter. The steps that lead down to it are enclosed by a marble 
balustrade, round which burn unceasingly a row of brazen lamps. 
At this altar service is performed only by the Pope himself or a 
Cardinal. Round these lights is a favorite spot for worshippers ; 
there is now kneeling a circle of various classes. People are 
walking, lounging or chatting, or gazing at monuments and pic- 
tures. Across the great nave nearly opposite to me, is a little 
crowd about St. Peter's statue, kissing one after the other his 
bronze toe. Yonder is a knot of soldiers. A group of three, 
the middle one a priest, is passing me in lively chat. A few 
yards to my left another priest is on his knees ; his lips move 
rapidly, nor are his eyes idle, nor his nose, which he occupies 
with snuff. Here come a couple of unkempt artisans, laughing. 
Yonder a white poodle is rolling himself on the marble floor, and 
a black cur is trotting up to interrogate him. From under one 
of the great arches is issuing a procession of boys, young acolytes. 
They crowd up to St. Peter's statue, kiss the toe, pass on, kneel 



160 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

for a few moments before the illuminated sanctuary, and then 
disappear in the distance. Not far off stand three priests in ani- 
mated talk. Across the transept, shines down obliquely through 
a lofty arch, an immense band of illuminated dust, denoting the 
height of a western window. I raise my eyes towards the dome ; 
the gigantic mosaic figures on its rich concave are dwarfed like 
fir trees on a mountain. Half way down the great nave, people 
are standing or kneeling a little closer, for service is going on in 
one of the side altars, and vespers are about to be sung in a 
chapel opposite. Many hundreds of visitors and worshippers 
mingled together are in the church, but merely dot thinly the 
area whereon tens of thousands might stand at ease. 

Monday, April 3d. 

Mounted in the morning to the roof and to the top of the dome 
of St. Peter's. What a pulpit whence to preach a sermon on 
tne lusts of power and gold ! 

In the afternoon we took farewell in the Vatican of the Apollo 
and his inspired companions. In the evening we went to hear an 
improvisatrice, Madame Taddei. When it is considered that this 
class of performers study for years their business, and that the 
Italian language runs so readily into verse, the performance loses 
its wonder. Moreover, the imagination has such scope, that they 
can and do spin off a subject very loosely. 

! Wednesday, April 5th, 1843. 

We left Rome at ten in the forenoon. The day was fine and 
our faces were turned homeward, whence, across the sea, blew a 
fresh breeze as we approached Civita Vecchia. 



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